my chest has become the home of a one-eyed boa.
when I was a child, this serpent was a child,
but now my vivarium has become exceedingly small
for this great snake as it grows and stretches my skin.
I am not elastic.
and as the mid drift coils around my black cavity chest,
part slithers up my throat,
causing me to gargle and choke,
silencing me into silence,
while the remaining 1/3 slides through
a short tube to my stomach.
I am nauseous.
this is the feeling when your boy
is playing soccer
and it’s all you can do to not think of
how he smells like grass and sweat and soccer
and how you would love to wrap your fingers around him.
and for a severed second
I am waiting for nachos.
and for a severed second I thought I was a warm, golden tortilla chip
that someone would want to crunch in their mouth.
This is the feeling when he gives another girl his jacket
and walks her to her car
and she compliments his eyes
and calls him by the nicknames you thought
were yours.
and for a severed second you think
of all the reasons you know you are inadequate.
like brown eyes withholding the freckles
and like the fact that you can’t command
your own skin or the way that it tears.
I am not stuck in a rut.
I am the grand canyon,
stuck in myself
without any water to drown myself in.
I am not made of acne,
I am a pimple.
and i’m every pimple
on all the faces
of my lovers who gave up trying or let me sink quietly
into the background as
doe-like females sauntered into the fore-
I am not a spot
I am a speckle that rides on the backs of spindly spiders
I am orange. I am poison.
I am not the geese but the pond.
***** overgrown and stagnant.
she is his rock and his river
and I though he was mine.