I want a lollipop. I want a red lollipop full of swirls and a stick as long as my arm. The colors should spin like a merry-go-round, or the spokes on a bike, round and round until I’m dizzy from head to toe. When I hold it up it should stick out like a red kite on a blue sky line, shaping clouds of white elephants chasing circus peanuts. It should exist forever and never run out of licks. It should be everything I want it to be.

But I wake and I open my eyes and it’s only a sucker. It cracks when I bite it, like grinding rock against rock. It sticks to my lips and to my jeans when I drop it- and I always drop it. The taste dulls. Fields of cherries become watered down, flooded out. I want a lollipop but he gave me a sucker, sticky and now fuzzy, cracking and dissolving until one day it will only be a soggy stick.