Cognitive Dissonance

It gets worse with time like milk or pollution.

Creeping and crawling up my neck and spreading down my legs

Like butter.

Intoxicating my lungs until they burst

And come up in bile and spit on my tongue.

Little specks of  the evil that burns my lips.

Pain is woven into our chests like a sickening quilt

Flicked one, two, three times

Then laid to rest on the bones of our family tree.

A never ending guilt passed in chips to you and me.

We’ll eat the chips, too.

Those crispy things and lick our fingers free from salt and sweat,

Because that’s all we know, it’s all we have:

Splintering like the roots of a palm, wrapping it’s thin fingers around my neck.

Holding me in place, begging me not to dig too deep and disturb its clump of tendrils.

And I will listen, grinning as I chew the soggy remains of what was left of your pain.

And you present these pieces of you as an heirloom,

And we will mindlessly clap for the gift you have bestowed upon us,

mindlessly accept that we have already lost.

I think you ruined me.