Ode to the Nerds Gummy Cluster

A poem by moi <3

In high school, they sold
Nerds Ropes in the bookstore, 
and for a period of time, 
maybe my sophomore year,
I ate one every day. 
I only remembered that recently 
when I saw a Nerds Rope 
at a Sheetz gas station, driving 
somewhere, I can't recall. 
I bought it for nostalgia's sake
and ate it as I hurdled down the
highway, and it was disgusting. 
So sweet like certain poisons, 
it made my teeth ache to think 
of myself at sixteen. Worlds away 
it seems like now. The taste of it
set fire to nothing for me. It was not
a madeleine dipped in lime blossom 
tea. Nothing like that at all. 

Anyway, I find it inspiring 
that all these years later, 
someone over at Nerds thought
to cut the rope into little pieces
and call them clusters instead. 
So that now, I am willing again 
a decade later, to make myself
sick eating them, so that
I really shouldn't buy them 
at all. So that I sometimes
search on eBay for cut crystal 
candy bowls and wish that 
my great grandmother was alive 
just to try them. It is after all 
possible to take the same 
materials and make something 
horrible or wonderful,
depending—after all possible 
to be transformed.