My favorite birthmark
is a brown dot near the center of my left eye
that makes my iris look like a leaky egg yolk suspended in time:
the mark of a girl
destined to never quite color inside the lines.

This is the most emotionally present
that I've been in a long time.
And now that roll has been called,
I'd like to go ahead and strike my name off of the roster.

It's way too soon
to write you a love poem,
but I think I may be in the socially acceptable time frame
to write you a like poem.

Yesterday, my doctor told me to cut cheese out of my diet,
so I'll try to keep the sentiment as vegan as possible.

Why doesn't my boyfriend want to hold my hand anymore?
It's always been clammy and frigid,
though I suppose it has gained this new
rigidness.

And no one wants to feel responsible
for a dead weight abandoned
in the palm of his hand.

And because it's my lifeless hand,
severed with all the fixings,
rabid and unruly,
nipping at the palm that smothered the life out of it,

Because of this,

he can't even pass it off
as a gag paperweight for Bill at the office.

My hollow regret fluttered to the ground,
bound by gravity
to fall as swiftly and ignorantly as my gaze.