Peeling Poem by JAE JAE

Gleaming pearls of a premeditated version of the past
tumble forth,
forgetting the ears that hear the taint of truth beneath
the shine,
the gritty growth and process that propelled me here, precluded fabrications and
the faith of the unknown,
mysterious mass of passing
lies all
interwoven to maintain this Good,
this glaring off-white way I
tell you everything in an evening
set with smoke and
fire flaring from the stove,
our eyes shielded against
the things that will wither, curl, and peel up
for me to disprove within due time; ticking
away that clicking clock degrades the moment with a threat: ephemeral-ness;
ethereality a myth I’m always mistaking—

these things, too, will blister and bake with the
pasta I’ll half-burn and hide to make
you smile;
jewels of just organic honesty, so bare so open so that
their orbits’ gravity suspends
me constantly
between a glamorous grace without reason and
the grievous fall to rationalization, rhythms
I feel and fear.

You are next to me
but there are hours and moments and ours
is a strange unfamiliarity—since I am weak in
this kitchen, spilling these beads across the linoleum floor with no linear
progression of ideas of
how I will string them back on that suspended wire
I’d clutched so lightly in a vulnerable adoration
of finally fumbling closer to something like
not lying, not liking
the way I’d wince and walk
to the other side of the room
each time you eat the space between us with
some unspoken words, some temporary thievery of
light from the fluorescent bulb that blares its heavy metal
melody—cacophonously warning me,
You’ll be transient as beliefs before you see
Those pearls discarded, dreams dashed, and, denigrated and dejected
please affirm the only permanence rests
too easily in pride and the peeling
of these pearls you shared too anxiously.
These lies, like evil, grow
up from the same vein
and sprout as startlingly as those
spheres of fleeting honesty you
polished up for supper—
like weeds, we’ll pluck the pearls
together from a pulsing neck
with their deadened,
peeling skins. I’ll lie again.