the jelly bean scramble

The jellybeans lived in cages.

Trapped behind the counter

like all the best drugs, they were held

at the mercy of the pharmacist's scale.

She'd take our orders, bean by bean -

two watermelon, six toasted marshmallow, four berry blue -

the rainbow grew

as we watched the price rise to match the change we scrounged

from the bottoms of our backpacks, our pockets, or, on the luckiest days,

the sidewalk. For forty cents, we could get twenty jelly beans.

Five apiece - enough to last the rest of the walk home,

if we held them in our mouths, felt the smooth sugar give way

to a layer as rough as a cat's tongue, and then

the translucent swallow of jelly inside.

From the candy counter, up the hill

and down the road to the bridge that ran over the train tracks,

we'd see who could make theirs last the longest,

always remembering to stuff the plastic bag

with its incriminating logo

in some neighbor's trash

before parting ways

at the corner of Ivy and Park,

willing the color to fade from our tongues

before we reached home.