Ever since I grew tall enough to reach the kitchen drawers, my favorite pastime was to kidnap the bag of rock sugar used for Chinese cuisine and lock myself in my room, going through a crystal a minute. In middle school, the obsession turned into Skittles, and I’d periodically beg my mom to buy the three-pound red bags from Target, munching and sucking through bowls of delicious marbles doing homework until the bag emptied itself. Nowadays, every Costco trip comes with a $9.99 bag of Hi-chews, stored in a plastic jar where it loses dozens a night; with the financial freedom of college, I even tack on occasional bougie purchases of mixed fruit drops and flavored jelly cups from the Asian grocery store down the street.
At the end of every sugary session, I sit in silence. The sweetness turns sickly, my lips turn dry, my gums numb and my teeth plaqued. I always regret, yet I always return.
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Inspired by prompt from Daily Themes Week 3: Sound
This one addresses syntax and sound. Write a half-length theme about anything at all in the prose that comes naturally to you, then scan your composition, first marking where the stresses would fall, then drawing lines between “feet” (two or three syllable units). Then revise the same piece making any substitutions whose stress and meter could help you emphasize or vivify key moments by way of the resulting rhythm.
I didn’t actually enjoy the revised version, so I’ve decided to post the original that I wrote.