in sugar

anything can be saved if boiled in sugar.
i want to make candied jupiter beetles 
& fireflies-- slide them into mason jars for winter.
no--i want to keep ones from every single year.
place them in rows on a shelf no one else 
will ever see. when i say i'm missing something
i mean getting older is like coming apart in fragments.
sometimes i feel like my body is getting 
farther & farther from the some truth. the train 
crushes sugar under wheels. when burnt 
sweet smells sharp like perfect fire.
i want to make sweet the earring you left
in my car & the spoon i stole for my parent's cupboard.
i want to caramelize the pens on your desk & 
that candle almost out of wax. dipping a wide spoon
into the white sugar. the hush of sand. 
cicadas in the sugar. ivy in the sugar. 
my barefeet in the sugar. scrubbing sugar
between your toes to make them shine.
processes of transfiguration. i lay in the sugar
& ask what it felt like to have once been green.
they sugar hushes me & i feel where the wind
might have moved through a field. we are all 
so sweet on the inside. a mother candies 
her child's teeth as they fall out one by one.
i dip strawberries in sugar & they tremble 
like bugs. what are we doing here, you & i?
we both know there's nothing good going to come
from feeling each other's mouth like this. 
the cavities burn holes in our tongues.
sometimes i want to be unrecognizable
but that is silly because no amount of heat
could break down that parts of myself 
i need to run from. someday i will make
only caramel. i will climb into the white sugar
& dream of cane. grab handfuls & write my name
in the grains. watch the grains swallow
each letter. a street lamp folds
in on itself as the ground below turns loose 
& sugary. i'm mixing spoonfuls of sugar
into water. i'm feeding the butterflies 
so much sugar they turn to glass. 
i'm telling them to trust me with their lives--
promising to make a display so that people can see
their fear as the sweetness makes stone.
i feed you spiders in sugar while you sleep
they will come alive somewhere down your through
where they will sew sweet silk webs. 
what am i going to do 
with all this sadness?