“Someone was that man’s mother”
Women caught their breath and held it in their throats
when the television divulged us in the more subsidiary details.
Details that could be publically handled.
“You’d shit yourself if you knew the whole story, sick son of a bitch”
Men would confer over their coffee and their heavy cream
trying to choke down the sweetness.
After that summer, sugar never tasted the same.
In his basement
A custom cooler
A time machine
He watched her body begin to decompose.
Tissue swelled in a chemical car wreck
Like a science experiment
(Phase one)
Tissue emanated mass weight
Like a magic trick
(Phase two)
But he couldn’t see her like this
The stark husk of a girl he loved
gaunt and pallid
dead and valid
This was not the woman he had tasted
with his malefic palate.
No. This girl was eating herself.
People with the audacity called it
art.
Families séanced around their television sets
footage of him screaming outside his home
Saying
“Don’t touch her, please just don’t touch her. Milly? Milly!”
In the arcane underground
he took a cutlery frosting knife
worked over her cadaver with
butter and solidified honey.
Laced her hair with licorice vines
carved lips from wet melon
green starlights replaced her eyes.
red hot pupils
gave her taffy fingernails
rainbow round sprinkle freckles
and purple gum drop nipples.
In an interview, years later
He’d say
“She was the sweetest girl I’d ever known.”
It was us kids though
that encountered the true horror
of his confectional affection.
We’d hide under sheets
covered in clouds and rockets
close our eyes and grind our teeth
because we were convinced she was hiding in our closets.
Sugar siren, hovering above my bed
butterfat dripping off her hips
red cocoa dust fogging up my room
and her green starlight optics
causing me to piss myself.
I swear the first time I was with a girl
I anticipated her areolas having this grit consistency
giving my tastes buds a buzz.
That sticky tart haunted my bed for years.
Every girl that wasn’t her was so plain,
Insipid and boring.
I can understand why he loved her.
His Milly.
