And the cigarettes paint our teeth yellow
Like the coffee and tea
We bathe our bones in.
Poems scrawled out in chicken scratch
On snow white wrists
While the spiders under my skin dance
A forbidden 8-legged tango.
Scars paler than my pigment stand out on my thighs
That are not unlike thunder.
My ribs press up against my torso,
A jail cell.
Once again the panic sets in
And I am taken hostage.
It feels as if my lungs took a voyage on the Titanic.
I named the left one Jack,
The right one Rose.
The right one always lives.
The cold creeps in
Followed by shouts from the audience
“Theres room for two on that door!”
But its too late.
Good ol’ lefty is already gone.
Sunk to the bottom of the ocean
Along with all my journals.
The teenaged feminists bare their fangs
And I smile.
So happy to see solidarity.
Blood drips from their teeth.
**** the pig.
Slit his throat.
A female Lord of the Flies.
He smiled at me from across the room.
Or maybe he smiled to the girl next to me.
She is prettier than me
And probably smarter
And easier to deal with.
I am stubborn and
She looks like the type of girl to lay down her guns.
I have got to stop thinking this way.
Metaphors and similes unravel on my tongue.
I mumble into the microphone something about
Not knowing what I should be feeling.
Should I feel happy
Because I survived while others,
Who have gone through way worse,
Are stuck under miles of dirt?
Should I feel empty
Because he took the very last of me
And he doesn’t even care?
Should I let the apathy set in again
Like rigor mortis?
Should I
Should I
Should I
I have got to stop using repetition to fill in the empty spaces
Between my words.
And I have got to stop staying up until 3 am
And complaining about how no one will love me
Because I am so difficult
And stubborn
And indecisive
And anxious
And ******.
And I have got to stop tearing myself down
Like a once beautiful, now broken building.
I write about self love a lot.
I should practice what I preach.
Where was I?
I don’t even know.
All I know is
The spiders have broken out in a full on dance battle
And the cigarette smoke is curling
In my one lung,
The one named Rose.
And my feminist friends eye my hairy legs
And whisper about ******.
And the solidarity breaks apart.
And my scars start to tear open again
And oh no,
There goes a spider.
And the boys make fun of my thighs
And I shatter like the glass I am
And I open a new journal.
And I write another poem.