Grape Soda and Gravity

The streetlights were blooming,

each sharp point now a haze,

a blurry, golden crown

in the fog of those first days

of knowing nothing.

My stomach pitched,

a slow boat on a dark sea,

and the brick wall, rough to touch,

was suddenly dear to me.

Grape soda, sickly sweet,

and something else, a bite

I'd never tasted,

turning the world wrong, then right,

then wrong again.

The ground felt soft, then hard,

and my own voice, a stranger's shout,

from a mouth that felt too wide, too large,

letting all the secrets out.