Everything is too
sugar-spine, salt-lipped,
staticstitched and jitterglow.

I can’t sit still
without turning into
a girl-shaped emergency.

I keep my synonyms in jars—
one for ache,
one for almost,
one for the word I made up
that means I miss you so much I become a faucet.

Language is a loose tooth.
I tongue it until it bleeds metaphor.
Call it poetry.
Call it coping.
Call it anything but what it is:
me, peeling the world into vowels
because I’m scared if I say what I mean,
you’ll hear it.

And then what?

You’ll answer?

You’ll echo?

You’ll send a voice memo
saying same
and I’ll combust on the Q train
like a well-read matchbook?

God, I am so
caption-core,
pun-drunk,
rhyme-accident-prone.
I named my stomach pit afterthought.
I named my wrists reminder.

And I named you
don’t.

But I still say it
every time I open my mouth
to speak.

I smiled so wide my molars got jealous.
Everyone said I looked stunning.
I said thank you in the voice I reserve for customer service and playing dumb.
That’s the closest I’ve come to a scream
this week.

I wore the dress that says: I’m over it.
(It lies.)
I walked like a question mark
straightened out with rage.

There was a man in the corner
making balloon animals.
He asked what I wanted.
I said surprise me.
He handed me a noose
shaped like a swan.

No one noticed.
Or maybe that’s just what I tell myself
to feel interesting.

Later, someone told a joke
I didn’t get.
I laughed like I was being watched.

The punchline wasn’t funny.
It just echoed
like something I would’ve said
before I got careful.

I stood in the kitchen
with a paper plate of olives and nothing,
holding it like proof
I was doing fine.

Someone spilled wine on the couch.
I said I’ve ruined better things.
Everyone laughed
like I meant it to be charming.
(I didn’t.)

A girl in white heels asked me
how I knew the host.
I said same way I know most people—
by accident,
and with the kind of premonition that wears perfume.

The bathroom mirror was cracked.
I counted the breaks like confessions
and chose not to atone.
The soap smelled like fruit
that only exists in dreams
you wake up crying from.

I reapplied my lip stain
like armor,
like alibi,
like an exit strategy.

Then I left without saying goodbye
because I couldn’t figure out
how to do it quietly
and still be missed.