You’re In This World, You Know

by Lizzie Snellings

I don’t know if it’s me or them.

I can taste the weight of the light polluted skies, starless and thick, blocked out by looming figures with ravenous gazes and elevator eyes

And I clutch a key I pray will open a locked jaw wide enough to force a scream.

I pull my teeth and swallow a forked tongue to make room for all the words I wish I could say, spitting nothings at empty eyed boys until one of them meets my hands somewhere between theirs,

Crafting ladders of skin and bone, getting altitude sickness while I reach for the space with which to carve out a place for all the body I carry

I can’t tell you where it all began

the news or the internet

the ozone or the oil spills

but somewhere along the line

the water got brackish and my skin became silt

and I wonder what it’ll take to erode me down to teeth.

Gravity pins me at the base of my spine to warbled mottled floorboards

And they’re colder than the empty part of the bed in my brain

I’m too rough and I’m too brittle

Nothing and everything all at once

Different and fun and plain and fuck you.

I could tell the truth and say I’m Happy Here

Or I could lie and say I’m Happy Here

I squint into the glint of my mirror before I stare down at my palms

Searching for a psalm carved in the empty valleys.

But the coin flips, the day changes, time folds itself sideways while the coffee cup leaves a stain on the finish

And then I blink myself back to the places where I am, suddenly briskly acutely aware that being bound by time is a paltry little concept

An angry tornado cocktail I have no choice to chug because I am severely dehydrated

Red wine headache but it’s 2pm and sunny

Watching the clock until I ask the numbers where they came from

Before threading a new needle

Sewing my skin taut against my cheeks

And waiting to hit a prime I fear will never come.