Soda Pop Pirates

I am stilted,

I am backwash conversation from the soda monologues of teenagerdom.

There is sticky sweetness of lost love on my fingers.

If you kiss me you will taste the syrup of loneliness that is my soul.

There is something inside me that pours itself onto ice and offers itself up to passersby,

But I close my lips so its cries echo in the cavity of my mouth.

Dear God, don’t let anyone hear it.

I am a an empty cavern waiting to be filled,

My once illustrious walls now blank and smooth from men who have stolen my treasures.

Pirates, they all are, here to take what they are not given.

Pirates sipping their off-brand soda pop in the sun,

Their bodies covered in the gold of my soul.

I am stilted.