Amber Issue 1 - Feb 21

i hoard stones in glass houses.
riel
i spend my whole life waiting.
yes, all seventeen years and thirty-eight days of it,
as long as i have to get up in the morning and glimpse
my reflection in the mirror,
double team pixelated into the inverted-triangle stickman
on all the toilet doors. when the pink gates lock, the
tiles wet and overflowing with salt, i make myself leave
the decapitated head of the other ( open ) door blinks, questioningly
and the soaked hem of my skirt answers, silently.
we all wear the shorts in this relationship. the blood on my knees follows me
from white to white to khaki,
but it stains the cloth all the same. i cannot
break gender roles if i never conform to them in the first place. i don’t want
equality. i want to be selfish. the pant legs hide scars, and not much else.
what do i have to cover up, anyway? all my degeneracy is in here.
-
i spend my whole life wanting.
it has always been about the pretty boys, and the video
games, and the irrational desire to be shaped like the xbox
se:x—but i don't know where all the pieces fit. i am seventeen
months old again, jamming
the circle into the square hole over and over and over and
i cry when my corners break off; of course i do.
when i talk to people about boys i am careful to correction
tape the worst parts out, but this makes
my story heavy with bandaged lies. i have never known how
to fix it,
how to look across the motion blur of the canteen and think i
want to write poetry about the swoop of his hair without also
dreaming about the scissors in my desk drawer,
how to stop feeling the jacknife of false happiness in my
throat when it rasps, sore as a wound, to rock-bottom.
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