in colombia, there is a cure-all:
agua de panela
cane sugar dissolved in warm water,
a shallowly sweet tea.
i was eleven years old,
at a colombian summer camp
surrounded by women
bearing sympathetic faces
when i was offered a plastic mug
of this to ease my homesickness.

i wonder now if they believed
melted sugar was a medicine.
i wonder if they thought
they could cure my bitter with sweet.

these days, i try to convince myself
it doesn’t matter what they think of you
but desperate times call for desperate measures,
so i scatter tablespoons of chocolate chips
over my bowl of cheerios,
trying to remember what sweetness
tastes like on my bare tongue,
deemed blunt and precise and harsh

they leave a saccharine aftertaste
that makes me want to throw up

a residue that buries itself in my teeth
so i can feel them rotting

i wonder if i must treat my words
like sour patch kids:

tart, acidic, something you chew on
but coated in sugar and bright colors,
always disguising myself
wrapping myself in layers of subtext
in apologetic emails and false smiles
i wonder if i am destined to speak
in sugarcoat,
a language that leaves cavities so deep
i’ll have no teeth left
to bite