Life Is Sweet

when do you know you’re going to vomit, and part of you won’t come back? when did sweet joys start tasting like warnings, when did the tremors come so often you treat them like routine? when did dinner become dread, food become tasteless, and your hands begin to tremor before the first bite? i can’t keep my dinner down without kneeling, without giving back every ounce of hope i let past my teeth. i wonder if anyone noticed that i can’t even keep down what little joy this life tries to feed me. i wonder if they tasted it— the sickness in my breath, the performance in my posture. the acid. the denial. the fact that i’m rotting from the inside out and still too polite to bleed at the table. can they tell i can’t even keep sweetness down anymore?