Cornflakes

 
The Salvation Army cot  
was scary as shit.

Not the cot, it was  
unassuming,  
and not the worst  
bed I’d ever slept on.  
 
But being in it,  
hearing the snorks  
and snores  
and cries  
and night noises  
from the other lost members  
of the  
loser  
tribe  
triggered a  
flight instinct that  
I had no way to follow through on.  
 
But it was better  
than the crank rage,  
broken walls,  
and screaming demons  
in bloodshot eyes we’d fled;
 
fled for now.  
 
Fresh out of rehab,  
or prison,  
or a binge,    
or wherever she  
went when she  
was gone,  
she’d make a manic  
effort to clean up  
and look like a  
good  
single mom  
 
which generally involved  
a different couch
in some  
shitty place that didn’t  
account for kids  

It’d usually end with  
me alone for days  
with no phone,  
no electric,  
scraping mustard  
onto a crust of old bread  
in a strange world,  

until social service  
would invariably pick me  
up and take me  
to my grandparents.  
 
Their home was the  
only place I always  
had a bed.  
 
But the first night,  
-- I was 9 --  
that I woke up on  
a cot in a shelter,  
is how I  
identify fear now.  
 
Things I can’t run from.  
Things I can't control.  
Things that reduce me to no one.  
 
I hid under the green blanket  
and just counted, and  
chanted, and did the  
weird things small  
children do when  
they lock up  
in their own heads  
 
to pass the night.  
 
In the morning,  
we sat at a long  
church-style social table  
with clear plastic over  
the stained tablecloth,  
and ate plain cornflakes  
with watery powdered milk.  
 
It was the worst cereal I’d ever eaten.  
 
I grew up in the cereal glory days  
where everything was so sugar-  
spiked that you could rot your teeth  
looking at the box,  
and there was always a puzzle  
on the back, or a  
strange plastic gizmo  
at the bottom.  
 
So the soggy, plain  
cornflakes  
were alien to my little palate.  
I looked around for sugar  
but a woman with  
unwashed hair was  
shoving the packets in her pocket.  
 
I choked them down,  
the bland taste turning to  
ashes and coating my  
throat with dread    
as  
she
prattled brightly  
about how we’d go back  
because we  
overreacted  
to the couch  
going through the  
sliding glass door.  

The couch I slept on.
 
I associate things with trauma.  
Like everyone else on the planet.  
 
And I eat  
plain  
cornflakes  
 
every  
fucking  
morning  
 
as a reminder  
that flight is  
an illusion.