"it's nasty," she says,
the words dripping
dancing acidic ballerinas
tumbling from her lips
pirouetting between
decayed yellowed molars
and exhaled
like tasty, toxic, treacherous
nicotine.

nasty? how?

nasty like the way it tastes
when you roll my flaws
around like a toothpick
and pick me apart like a corpse
on the side of the road?

nasty like shoe polish medicine
slipping down your esophagus
just to ease the guilt for a night,
dragging you away to a restless
rem cycle where your troubles
melt away?

nasty like your childhood and the
scars on your shrunken skin,
like the memories that smell distinctly
of top shelf gin;
like the echoes of the places
you used to haunt, the denial of
what happened there hollowed out
and gaunt?

nasty like denying yourself freedom
in the most euphoric way
because you never learned how to ask,
command, what would please you
if only you had stayed?

nasty like the marriage
you stay in every day,
a dead end since you met,
fated to be a prison cell to whom
you're confined?

or nasty like the way
you can't look at yourself
in the mirror
without finding something that
you wish you could change?