Self-Portrait as Rizzo in the School Yard
By Grae Gardiner
It's #tbt! Enjoy this great one from SWWIM Every Day's archives!
after Marty McConnell I hide behind a waterproof shadow and red matte lips. You say I can’t hurt, though you ignore me on our dead-end street. In the tub at home, I scum pink, peel strings of pus-puckered skin clean off my nail beds. I don’t cry. I wait, tuck the bleed under my tongue, clot pain with spit. In your Ford’s patinaed backseat I collapsed our altar. Its centerpiece was me: stripped and naked and thin as the skin at the wrist, the back of the knee. I’m not sorry to say the wrong words for the right reason: I never wanted you. There are worse things I could do when leaving is not enough, when leaving is still too much.
Gra[c]e "Grae" Gardiner is a British-American non-binary poet, scholar, public library worker, intermedia installation artist, and goose. Find them online at pearlsthatwere.tumblr.com.
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