“You look like my daughter”
The man says to me,
As he’s ordering me a drink
Looking my body up and down.

I laugh,
Look away,
Try to pretend he didn’t say that

Oh but don’t worry
He made it a point
to mention
T H R E E
              M O R E
                           T I M E S
how my body
Resembled his daughters,
“Tight, perfect, the right kind”

Oof.
Idk y’all
Idk that I can do this.
I walk away
I dont make that money.
Even though I know **** well,
I fit his ****** up fantasies.

Not to mention I’m triggered,
Thanks to my childhood trauma,
By all of this conversation,
But it doesn’t really matter
Anyways.
Just a product of my environment
Just an object to fill
The desires
Of hungry eyes.

**** it
Let me be
An empty *** doll.
Just take my intelligence with you please.
Flowers for Algernon ,
And I’m wilting.
I’m too aware of my place in society.

Why strive to peruse my education,
When I know no one will hire me
Because of my background?
Why stay sober,
When my ******* flashbacks
Only stop when I’m drunk?

I hate my life.
No I don’t like the job I have;
But this **** ain’t easy.

And none of it is my fault.
It isn’t.
None of my trauma is my fault.

At least At the end of the day
I have the comfort
Of knowing,
That I matter just as little as the next person.
My life,
In all of its glory,
matters just as little as john f Kennedy’s
I am nothing
And we are nothing

Our suffering is eternal

To She
who whet
the corven wing,
her skin pulled back
an open firth unraveling
her scarlet mood

the first
among the thirsting.

To Her
that swallowed whole,
the rye, the blade
that clipped the startled shoulder,
carpal deep in gleaming brine,
who shivered time a potent pleasure,

Garlanding
the golden hurt,
that life was
never hers..

Beholden to
a tethered ransom
rivered in her stars...

Am I reminding you that I exist?
Why do I take on that task?
I should be embedded
In your brain
In your veins
Like you are in mine

Empty
It’s what I feel
Lonely and stolen
Like I don’t belong
Trampling over breaths
I started to exist
But it wrenched out
To another trail
Another road
And I tried
To hope
Again

Landfall...

a progress
nipped by headwind,
though his bullish heart
has flickered clear of drowning,

so he's dusting down
Saharan surplus, hawking
off the sea-sick yachts,
ensconced in royal chiffon,

appealing for that magnet-tug
along the pollen flyways
pulling homeward..

and
I wonder
if he sees me,
-mid shipped twitter
post Johannesburg-

a gurning
plate of swan-necked
adulation, craning skyward

that I should pin
my yearnings to his
cloud-encrusted orbits
caws of folly..

more fanciful
than summer being
borne upon his wings...