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Trix Are for Kids

by xochi cartland

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The cereal factory hides behind
Canyon River. Come summer,
it’s like swimming in Cinnamon
Toast Crunch. My mother gives me Cheerios
and cardboard expectations. I forget
about the girl with black combat boots
and green manic panic hair.
How we would go to Goodbye Blue Mondays.
How her hands in my hands would fizzle
like the first fast firecrackers of June.
When she said my name,
my blood went Snap! Crackle! Pop!
and that’s when I knew —  she puts the A
in Apple Jacks. Her lips drown
out the whole Midwest. But when the Thursday
tornado alarms come on, I go back
to being a broken bicycle, stuck in a town
too small to hide from but too big to swallow,
where it always smells like the chocolate chip
cookies of a real estate open house.
The air says: “good bones good bones.”
My mother says: “come home come home.”
The girl says: “not all of us are born lucky —
some of us have to steal it.” At the cereal factory,
we head for the Lucky Charms, the green clovers
falling like forgiveness straight down the line.
Under the stop motion lights, I kiss her a
conveyor belt. It was love at first bite.

 

xochi quetzali cartland is a queer & latina poet, seamstress, and transformative justice practitioner. She graduated from Brown University with a BA in Literary Arts & has since moved back home to Washington, DC, where they are rekindling their love of trees & learning to make pretzels. Her work has appeared in Common Ground Review, Little Patuxent Review, Muzzle Magazine, & elsewhere, as well as supported by National Arts Strategies & Brooklyn Poets. Find more of their work on ig @y.las.maravillas