What Do You Mean?

 

What do you mean you won’t eat my home-baked pies?

I sprinkled them with your favourites.

I might hate pineapples, but I’d take a piece if you asked me to.

I’ll sit by your side, and mend back to health.

 

I had a friend who told me all your pain is sand,

you could simply come home, you know.

He believed in magic

because he had seen me heal over time.

 

What do you mean I didn’t have to do it?

Sure, I know there are better pies at that old store down the street.

But I’m asking if you want heart bubbles or a bottle of soda.

It feels like you’re addicted to both,

though Coca-Cola has your heart. Yes, I know it comes with bubbles.

 

It had been so long since I spoke to that friend.

Then, on a random Tuesday, he texts:

I will cure you. I’ll rip that depression from your soul.

 

He continues, There’s a dark side to the world.

 I’ll learn its ways, and the rituals will dissolve all your trauma.

I told him I was already healing, that I was okay.

 

I decorated the apple pie from the new store.

What do you mean the fridge is empty and the silence drowns you?

Please go away, I said. He stood there, watching,

A part of me will always linger a little longer.

 

Yet, on this thin line,

I see both faces,

equally foreign.

The unsettling truth is that

to them, I’m just another ghost,

lost in the crowd,

and I’m foreign to them, too.