Because I became allergic to chocolate when I was seventeen

because a rash spread on my chest when I ate mole sauce at Sanborns; because acne populated my face every time I drank hot cocoa; because I believed it to be easy to give up something I loved; because I skipped Hershey’s Kisses and Snickers bars and Reese’s peanut butter cups; because when dark chocolate became a craze, I didn’t understand what the big deal was; because I bought carob and believed it was good enough; because I forgot it didn’t really taste like chocolate at all; because I kept going down that same road; because I did not look back; because a person can lose a thing and not miss it even though everyone thinks they should; because I lived through three decades of carob-coated peanuts, carob-coated raisins, bags of carob chips; because when I dared to taste chocolate again, tentatively, nothing bad happened; because I stood still and closed my eyes and savored it for longer than I ever thought I could; because only then did I understand why people felt sorry for me all those years I did without; because sometimes it takes a long time to see the canyon of a loss, to look deep into its vacancies; because for so long I did not understand all the other hollow doors I’d chosen with their loose knobs, all those roads I’d traveled with their pocks and cracks, their darkness and dead ends; because I had dark chocolate for breakfast this morning; because now not a day goes by that I don’t eat it, its bitter taste laced with sweetness, and regret.