The Broccoli Myth

(Pre-Script: This post goes down easy if you read it as the song, "Sweet Pea," #5 on the playlist, plays in the background. Go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...)(...still waiting...)

Believing in something because it's what you think you should believe in not the same thing as believing in something because it's what you actually believe.

Blink

Blink

Blink

My entire life, people have told me that broccoli is good for me, it is SOOOO good for me, and "OMG, how can you NOT like broccoli, it is SO GOOD for you!" I've heard it so many times, in fact, no one has ever told me the opposite. I have even said it myself, "broccoli is good for me!" but that must have been before I had an original thought of my own. Well, actually, judging my the number of imaginary friends I had as a child, complete with first, middle, last names, and siblings, I WAS already having original thoughts of my own. I just had yet to have an original thought about the vegetation I was forced to ingest.

I would sit at the dinner table and be told I had to eat my broccoli before I could leave the table. So I believed for many years that broccoli was indeed GOOD. FOR. ME.

World without end, Amen.

But then one day, as I was attempting to swallow this vilest of miniature edible trees, As if my body were a tree shredder, shredding this small tree to use for my own bodily purposes as I carried on with my day, It occurred to me that I was involuntarily gagging. And I had to ask myself, "How the heck can something be good for me if my own body is doing everything in it's power to reject it?"

I decided then and there that broccoli is good not for me. It might be good for you, your nutritionist, a food chemist in Iowa, and your mother who makes the BEST broccoli cheese casserole this side of the Mississippi, but it is not good for me.

World without end, Amen.

Never again will I try to force myself to focus focus focus just to swallow anything that tastes like the love child of all of my disgust and regret, lightly seasoned with exhaust fumes.

-XOXO,

Violet

(Pre-Script: For a more sensationalized experience, read this poem as the song, "Secrets," #43 on the playlist, plays in the background. Go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...) (Still waiting...)

I am the raw split open version.

There are body parts,

internal organs strewn here and there

along my highway.

Rubber neckers watch and say to each other,

"All this time, I thought it would be

deep purple,

but I would call that more of a violet,

a bright vivid violet,

definitely."

-Yeah, I get that all the time.

-XOXO,

What I Held

(Pre-Script: For a more full bodied experience of this poem, read it as the song, "Gravity," #42 on the playlist, plays in the background. Go down to the playlist, click on that song, then come back and resume reading. I'll wait...)(...still waiting...)

When I am old my hands won't rust
or dissolve into dust
if you blow on them, or treat them
less than gingerly.
They will remain as solid and bony as ever,
(do you see how thick my knuckles are?)
these hands that held the babies when they were born
that opened and closed opened and closed
let go of things and pulled things in and pulled things in only
to let go of them so that
I can hold them
when I am old
and my hands
contain the same nerve endings, the blood
still pumping through them from the same heart
that always pumped
(I cannot speak to the condition of this heart,
but my hands,
at least,
will be softer.)

-XOXO,