I am not eating my feelings

I am not eating my feelings

My feelings taste

like salty ocean water in my lungs

like pine sol

like biting full force and without warning into that terrible chewy bit in a chicken sandwich

like mediocre overpriced food from an otherwise beautiful memory filled with people I’m supposed to be trying to forget

like antacids

like those peanut butter sandwiches that used to get smushed at the bottom of my high school backpack and get eaten covertly in the art room

like those bottles of Pinot grigio I drank alone as a “fuck you”

like her

like that blue drink my uncle bought me be because “you are more fun when you’re drinking”

like carrots when the other kids are trading gushers for goldfish

like the dissolvable cardboard of a Catholic eucharist wafer

like that mouthful of dinner when he says “wow, you must have been hungry”

I am not eating my feelings

I am eating ice cream

And it is delicious.