A Raisin

I don't know what I could’ve seen when I stared at the raisins on my plate. How they wrinkled and squished into these tiny, peculiar forms like the eyes of an alien sucked out from the dryness of Mars. I said to my mom, “I don't like raisins,” And she informed me of how good they were, how they were ‘healthy’ for you. No, they aren’t good for you. They go into your body, and they just sit there. And then before you know it, they take over your body, every day you’re eating raisins from a tiny box, but now it's a “Marlboros” or a different colored one, they’re stuffed into these long tubes and they’re so hot that they smoke at the end. I have to believe it’s raisins, my daddy has them every single day on the porch no later than three o’clock.

When I was a kid I used to think raisins were bad. Every day I have a pack of raisins, tucked into little tiny rolls of brown-white paper with the end smoking as I breathe in their chemicals. Lighting them with my sparkler I know that by now, raisins are good, they help me cope and help me breath. On the days I can't breathe, the days I don't have raisins, are the days I feel myself devolve into that scared child again, the one who shook her head no at the sign of raisins on her plate. My father passed away from raisins, but it wasn't their fault, nor his, it was just that humanity had been manufactured to worry.