Jelly High

Let's workshop this bitch!

Jelly High

As a teen I would come home at night blown
from the flat-brown weed of Chamber’s Street 
(Newburgh) and make my midnight PB and J.
My mother’s room was right at the kitchen.
This had me clench through the sound
of breaking the fridge’s sticky-gasket seal 
and attempt to minimize open-door light time. 

At the counter in dark, white bread laid out 
on paper towels torn with like clench,
I would be thinking: I’m fuckin’ rockin’ this!
My head would bop to a secret beat kicked up
so strong from notice of the application grace, 
and the small and few knife clinks, that often
I fell into worry that I had been beatboxing it. 

I would wake up to my mother yelling 
about jelly down the counter cabinets.
I started to wonder whether my stepfather
might have been fucking with me these nights.
Before taking my sandwich into the room, 
I would make it a point to wipe everything
even when, as usual, all was already clear.

* “Jelly High” originally appeared in Minetta Review (2015)

Photo Credit: flickr.com/people/barkbud/