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#femaleperspective
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.
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Apr 6, 2025
Apr 6, 2025 at 9:30 AM UTC
Kiernan515
Loose Tooth Language
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.
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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.
0
Apr 6, 2025
Apr 6, 2025 at 10:21 AM UTC
Kiernan515
Olives and Nothing
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.
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