rewriting (again) or reimagining this post I wrote a while back called “Recovery.”
***
“Are you sure, sweetheart, that you want to be well?”
-Toni Cade Bambara, The Salt Eaters
“–let me go mad, Grandmother. Let me bleed and be forever lost and no one.”
-Toni Cade Bambara from “The Survivor,” Gorilla, My Love
The ones on the top row were the first to go.
I spat them out on a plate one day, next to the wrecked remains of chicken bones, and watched them sink into the orange oil smeared across the porcelain. I looked on, bored, almost as if they were not for me.
The wisdom ones went next, the irony so apparent it was almost nauseating.
They shattered into someone else’s mouth. The time has long come and gone, and they still can’t tell if that is grit or bone or me causing their jaws to grind and stick, worn down and rusty as an forgotten mill
Finally, it was right up front, on the left.
I missed the silent warning. The root perishing in place, turning the enamel outside slowly brown and darker still ’til the surface was crumb like the sugar I love in my tea.
How could you let it get this bad?
Well, I decided to crack and vanish myself little by awful little.
I have a little time–
zoegadegbeku.com 