What Changed

I bought the cereal that used to taste

like memory, like sweetness,

like the person I was

before the years kept score.

The first spoonful tastes like waste,

like artificial vanilla playing at

being real. The milk goes gray.

My tongue remembers differently—

or it lies. The day

we're older is the day

everything tastes like dust

and broken trust in time.

I'm sitting at a table that's not

that table. The light is different.

My stomach is different.

My mouth is not the mouth

that woke up hungry in that dorm.

I could throw this out.

I could pretend the taste is fine.

Instead I'm swallowing this line

between who I was and who I am,

and it tastes like resignation,

tastes like the body keeping score,

tastes like I'm not the same anymore.