haribo

You are eating a red gummy bear because it tastes like the round edges of a cherry pit as it dribbles through parted lips or because you’ve taught your tongue restraint so that the green ones taste like thick shampoo you let drip down your face sting your eyes in the shower and catch the corners of your mouth so you have to spit and the yellow ones taste like your linen pillow stained in salt from inundating tears after you’ve spat out sins wrapped in shampoo bubbles for hours where they settle in your shower drain like a mound of pitted olives at the bottom of a ceramic bowl you made in art class and the orange ones taste like confessions that simmer as broth in your throat at night after you’ve chewed the salted cotton pillow still damp from wet hair that smells of saliva and soap and the clear ones taste like the inside of a washing machine after you’ve cleaned your sheets and pillow cases and yellowed socks and the blue ones taste like a window opening to hear the staccato of a faulty lawn mower and the pink ones taste like a stranger muttering the word fat into a landline but my eardrums sensitive like finger pads near a fire picked it up chewed it and spit it out because the pink ones are your least favorite so you tuck the plastic bag under your seat eat a single red gummy bear your tongue somersaulting with crimson and count the days until you return to the movie theater sit in row three and pretend the sugar doesn’t taste like sin