Why do your words feel like slaps on my wrists, hands and fingertips.

Carpet burned knees
Puking next to the trees
Paying the fee
For feminity

Life is unexpectedly wild, or maybe it’s wild expectedly.

The first thing they will see are my eyes:  probably glazed over or maybe bulging with anxiety and regret. Maybe dipped in tears, a salty salute. A salutation of goodbyes.

The last thing my eyes see: four boxes stacked neatly together. Cubicles or canteens to hold my sorrows and secrets. Binders binding the bills that beat me down. And the makeup stacked haphazardly to hide the beating and the mistreating. A treated piece of wood your grandfather made you, but you can’t stand to see it. Hats and gloves to keep my numb limbs warm, chapstick to keep my lips from warp. Pigment passes my pupil, a grey brown and then it’s all over.

You’ve been gone so long I can’t remember the sound of your voice when you called me rosebud, I can’t remember why I needed to remember. When I could or could not.

Only a face a mother could:
Hate

Glass rectangle
Burning cave
Core it
Cut it
Cinnamon catastrophe across the counter
Seeds slipping between the seams
You forgot to caulk
The kitchen pregnant with your mistake
Home baked