maybe i don’t see things clearly things are murky and thick and there are just so many parts of you in front of me there are parts of you that remind me of the okra i carefully pick out of my mom’s annual christmas eve gumbo at first i don’t pay close attention, i’m just so hungry for substance i don’t think twice about the contents of the bowl in front of me as i sit there i start to see it it’s actually there i start to sift through the bowl i look down at the spoon struggling to keep the inconvenient vegetable in place as i try to move all the okra to one side of this soup i want to shrug my shoulders & move on to the apple pie but one cannot just simply live on apple pie so i put the spoon into my mouth with all the parts of the gumbo it’s pretty great i mean it was when i was hungry now it’s good i guess why am i still here with the spoon to my mouth? You my dear are my mother’s gumbo and i still fucking hate okra