Lemoncide

Lemoncide

I’ve gotten sharper since we went our ways;
perhaps someone put a contrast filter on me.
I speak, half to shock you,
half to make you realize you never knew me
half as well as you thought you did.
Nor I you.
I expect your reactions to the sharpened statements;
the lemon sting of a more foreign-seeming tongue,
but when your lips proverbially pucker
at the sound-taste of unbarbed words,
I sometimes find myself stung.