I cannot live off of
Random compliments from fortune cookies,
Their stale bread sweetened with sugar
Messages meant to make me feel better.
Old, overused meanings sprinkled
With the sweetness of a compliment
From a cookie that tastes of old toast and styrofoam.
These messages cannot give
Enough sincerity,
Lying through their folded gaps,
Half, and half again they cannot supply
The needed knowledge of me
To pass judgment,
Contained in stale prison bars,
They have no notion of their surroundings,
The outside world, me, is like
Schrödinger’s cat, both good and bad,
Needing and unneeding of the overly sweet, stale, and sentimental
Message contained inside.
These cookies like stale styrofoam cannot
Give me enough nutrition to survive,
Their sugar does nothing by way of masking flavor
But everything by way of making it sweeter;
While the stale styrofoam cookie cannot fill you,
It can still sit in your stomach.
Nothing can be gained from these fortune cookies,
Overly sweet cookies like messages
That I cannot live off of,
The sweetness rapidly fading,
Fading like all good things,
Fading like the sweetness of the message
Masking the stale meaning underneath.
I cannot live off of random compliments from fortune cookies,
But still I try.