hey sugar;

sweetly sick to your stomach.

Jun 20, 2025

a poem about living your life infantilized down to a sugar-sweet. innocent, mild, easily does someone else’s bidding. violently sickening.

hey sugar;

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

this tolerant skin smolders just as torched sugar 
sanding silk creme brûlée as the Sun relays her name 
for me, Sweet-Thing. i warm with my palms half-sheets 

of puff pastry at Butter Sweet Dessert Bakery. my bicep stutters 
through a decaf latte and a trilling gun’s acupuncture 
at Super Sweet Tattoos & Coffee and growing young 

my mother’s tall friends and grayed neighbors teased 
me forever Little Miss Sweetie-Shy. 

unchaperoned i like to chew on thick lemon piths and swallow 
peppered pistachios whole and i gag on cough syrup that glows 
radioactive and cherryberry flavored drinks that flood 

my gums like bloodied water.
 
i never smiled when i sported braces and i never smiled 
when my teeth were still crooked and when i smile 
now it is behind a flat hand or with my mouth mashed 

to a single silent lip.

i am sweet when i am placid and i am placid when i lack 
the appetite to sprout any bigger. my back is iron straw
but susceptible to the will of wind's golden heat. heart-

shaped shoulders splayed inviting, eyelashes hung low 
like my flare blue jeans, i am sugarcane left to putrefy 
so pleasantly underneath a bystander sky, pay no mind 

to my string grass veins and fibrous splitting hairs.

slice me open before i wilt if you wish. wield some fillet knife 
in an impatient flourish, you’ll find folded drippings thick 
as pulled glass candy. everyone else has struck and sucked 

and spit out this doughy-wet saccharine flesh.
 
even the benevolent Sun reaches for me wolfish, hopscotching 
melanin patches, heavy at my eggshell temples

hey Sugar, she says, don’t you dare dissolve just yet.

i’m trying to do a thing where i write something and don’t look it over ten thousand times. which is what this is. mind you, i get terrifically nauseous at the idea of publicly posting writings that i haven’t thoroughly edited and pulled to shreds.

i reckon it’s part trauma response from being a pathetically unnecessary over-achiever during school and part being of the type A - virgo sun - eldest daughter combo.

anyways, i wrote this at like 1am last night so it is much fresher than most else i publish on here. tell me how you feel about it! like it, hate it, makes no damn sense? let me know.

take care of urself, i’ll catch u later.

-sofi <3