“Peanut butter and jelly just go together,”
I said, “or at least they do for Americans-”
“Unless they’re allergic and have to carry an epi pen in case they even smell a peanut,”
He interrupted.
He always interrupted, interjected, and colored
my thoughts with his opinion to make me more him,
my thoughts more his, to claim me as him,
Or so I thought.
One day he was no longer the peanut butter to my jelly.
He left to become the meat in a different sandwich,
but I’d never known he was meat.
I thought he was the nuts to my fruit.
I thought he was my nuts.
His nuts mine, and my fruit his.
Together forever, love incarnate as a couple
separate, equal, interdependent,
better for each other.
Sometimes.
His opinion no longer colored mine or covered my thoughts
with the debris of his mental gyrations.
He no longer twirled his influence reining me into his orbit
to control, to end my wanderings and flights of fantasy
across universes unknown, created by me for me.
One day I was no longer the jelly to his peanut butter,
no longer his fruit, no longer ours, no longer his,
No longer.
Born again from the ashes of my grief
I twirled alone, stronger, changed from the us
and the me before the us.
New worlds loomed, blossomed, bloomed
in the ashes of my grief that had uprooted
the flower of his lying, dying love.
“Grief and love are like peanut butter and jelly,”
I said, “they just go together.”
And there was no one to interrupt me.
By M.L. Seager
M.L. Seager is my poet alter-ego. I’ve been writing poetry since I was eleven. It’s my gateway drug into writing, and it’s where I feel the most at home. For me, poetry is the snapshot, the shot of a moment in time, a captured fleeting second of life that speaks eternally across the universe. It is where I go to be renewed again.
