She offered to share her chocolates with me

as we sat in the frayed webbing of her rusted lawn chairs

on one of the last warm evenings

of what had been an unseasonably cool summer.

I didn’t know which piece to take

because I was afraid of getting one I wouldn’t like,

but having to eat it anyway,

just to be nice.

Not that it mattered,

because all the good pieces were already gone.

She had broken them open

and left the nasty ones

with their gooey pink insides

lying scattered about the box.

So I politely declined.

November 2002