Sweetness

It grew in my mouth, in my cheek

I stayed home from school a day

My father said I looked like I had the mumps

My mom said my cheek was warm

I don’t remember what it looked like but I do remember

how it felt

It felt tense it felt like a muscle pulled tight ready to move

It felt like a stretched piece of canvas for a painting

Or cotton on a hoop for embroidering

And I couldn’t stop poking at it

My cheek hurt so I refused to touch that

My toungue became my weapon

Poking at the tense spot

Proding

Probing

Poking, trying to find a spot that would allow me some

release

My cheek felt like rubber

Poking and prodding and probing

Proding and probing and poking

Probing and poking and probing

The tension snapped like a balloon filled past where it stays

whole

Perhaps I had done something with my teeth

perhaps the infection had gotten bigger

Perhaps I finally found the right spot with my tounge

But like a pimple on the inside of my mouth it burst open

Oozing

The sickly sweetness coating my mouth

Sweeter than sugar on my tounge

Melting

Like frosting

Perhaps that’s when I started favoring salt

It still hurt after that

But not as much

For the week everything I ate had a sweet after taste

A sign of what was not yet resolved

I haven’t had the infection for years now

Sometimes I still taste the sweetness of the infection though

I wonder of it still isn’t resolved