The World According to Poetry #6
Chocolate Candy
By Stephanie Wood Miller © 2019
I reach for sweet, slick, dark
Chocolate
While I sleep
Because when I am awake
It never tastes as good
As in my dreams —
As a remembered cup of coffee
In a train station in Switzerland
A hot, buttered sweet roll
In grandma’s sunny kitchen
All seem better than any
Here or now.
In my memory, and my dreams
They fill the empty hole
The deep, down place
That has never been filled
Can never be filled
The hunger that gnaws at me
Inside
And never finishes its meal
Even if I offer it candy
Instead of me.