It’s too simple to say you are a candy I’ve never tasted. You ask me to go to the circus with you. I buy peanuts. Neither of us enjoy eating peanuts from the shell, and the circus has changed since we were young. In good ways, we agree.
When you introduce me to Circus Peanuts, it feels like intimacy. You trust me with the controversy of candy, teach me to want flavours that others reject. My lips explore the complex texture of muscles over your shoulder blades; it reminds me of foam. Not everything is a metaphor, I whisper.
Months later, you claim my collarbone doesn’t taste the way sugar should. You don’t know how to want, you keep biting, candy never satisfies your teeth or tongue. You insist love has no voids. Then, you say love’s voids feel like dried marshmallows that stick in your teeth. You’re avoiding me.
Nothing in either of our beds holds foam in its memories. I can’t identify the flavours we concocted. New beginnings are stale, reek like rancid peanuts-in-the-shell. We can’t take our love back to the circus.
This started as a request from Christian Wilkie (@CWWilkie) for an ode to circus peanuts. But since I’ve never tasted circus peanuts and my muses do what they want, this is what happened. I don’t think this is close to what he expected.