Me: a tiger pacing back
and forth in a cage,
but the bars to the cage are made of bull
**** called "your twenties"

Not pictured: Me, waiting for the bus,
checking my watch,
caught between being on time and being
too late.

I stutter-stop, I choke back some choice words
through my small, off white teeth. It's 808s as
my heart beats, it's anxiety as a normal thing.
This is only half of the power of the Big City Atmosphere
and I'm already feeling tired of it.

What are you thinking about?
the way your lips might cause my slow death
How are you?
tears don't mean a thing to this generation,
but they keep on flowin' anyway
What's wrong?
*have you ever wondered why fish mistake
their babies for food

Do you know what love is?
*love is red-rimmed eyes, bass line,
cosmic soda pop in your blood,
unabashed shame

well, I'm a foreign dialect,
and musically uninclined, I'm the exoticism
fetishized by old white men who want a Greek-Italian-
Latina-Persian harem.
I am the the voice that doesn't match the body,
the long-limbed and quiet. My insides are not my
outsides, my tenderness with them won't
be afforded to you, not just yet. And I lick
the wrapper on every dark chocolate bar,
my O-mouth on every milkshake straw,
knowing I am being watched

Straight-across-bangs-girl,
licking sour sugar from the inside of the gummy worm bag.
I want to be her
(sometimes)
Angel Olsen slight small type with a 40's voice,
top choice for an indie movie heroine.
but I-

"and my heart,
which is very big,
I promise it is very large,
a monster of sorts,
takes it all in—
all in comes the fury of love.”
-Anne Sexton*

strong jaw, tight lipped,
strawberry candy wrappers
littered all over,
i sit and wait for you to come home.
the creak, and the pace of your
feet as they cross the floor.
I'm tempted to reach out and grab your ankles
where they peak from
the tops of your socks.
shoes off, jeans to the floor,
i want you to know you're safe from me,
because while the closet has skeletons
and there are monsters under the bed,
i am the anger-love child, i am the
passion-hate child, i am the child of
a recycled metaphor, a scribbled tired song
who wouldn't dare let those eyes drop
to the floor

To me, you were like
cinema breath, that black and white
suspense. I hung on the lips, the chin,
the tongue
and craved the line

*"Why don't you come up sometime and see me?"