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.