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When the heat has left your body,
and no sound passes your lips,
I will drift here
in this dark eternity.

One frosty morning in July

White chocolate: a ghost story

If someone says to you, “Life is like a box of chocolates,” you should know that to be nonsense, at least in one sense – it it says right there on or in the box exactly what you’re going to get. In another sense, however, it’s quite right – some of your selections will be good; others will be garbage, particularly anything made with white chocolate.

The phone rings. I answer it.

“Cacao! Cacao!” pins into my ear like the call of a deranged bird. “Cacao!”

“Yes,” I reply and hang up.

I am reminded: “Quoth the raven. ‘Nevermore.’”

White chocolate is an abomination. It pretends to be something it’s not. It lacks the richness and, yes, the bitterness, of true chocolate, though it contains a trace of its heritage. In its permanent segregation from the darkness of the cacao bean, it is the culinary equivalent of Apartheid.

The phone rings. I answer it.

“Cacao! Cacao!” again.

I reply, “The darker the cherry, the sweeter the juice.”

“Cacao!”

Many people you meet in your life will be white chocolate – best avoided no matter who the manufacturer is, no matter how attractive the packaging may be. You will be unsatisfied. Real chocolate commands your respect, though sometimes it will make you say:

“I will devour you gluttonously.”

The phone still pressed to my ear, I hold the chocolate to my lips and breathe in deeply. 

“Cacao,” I say into the phone. I hear a faint laugh before the connection is broken, and in the darkness I can hear her smile.

Chemical warfare

This miserable fucking wind
cuts into my head
and squeezes my brain
with its icy fingers.

The throbbing builds
until I want to
experiment with trepanation
or shove knitting needles
into the back of my skull
to relieve the pressure.

But I sit here,
rocking, with glazed eyes,
waiting for the drugs
to kick in.