P O E T R Y
Adrita Zaima
The cursor is blinking at me. I blink back.
I tell him of the scratch of pencil on paper as my hand races against time,
And the brief bouts of adrenaline and words rushing through my veins
Waking me up.
But that half an hour later, I am nothing but an immobile heap,
With my head on the verge of splitting apart,
Letting forth all the mutilated pieces it holds inside.
I weep as regret washes over me.
The cursor is blinking at me. I blink back.
I tell him of the feelings like rags doused in kerosene
Choking me from inside out,
Drowning me in my own misery.
I lie prostrate and close my eyes and think of her hands, teasing and sensual
But not on my skin.
The tang on her breath, the salt of her skin sweep over my senses and engulf me.
I weep as envy washes over me.
The cursor is blinking at me. I blink back.
I tell him of the splash of paint,
Of the labyrinthine patterns,
That do nothing to calm me now.
I roll around on the splattered floor as I think and think and think.
Thoughts flood my head and all the lines and curves do is make me think more
About how tired I am of being caught in the tangle of my words.
I weep as anger washes over me.
The cursor is blinking at me. I blink back.
I tell him of the wives and the mistresses and the booze and the cheating,
The absent fathers and the dead mothers and the overbearing brothers and the speechless sisters from the endless queue of novels,
And of the man’s words—
Temperance, surely you know it,
My prudish princess.
No, I didn’t forget.
I weep as disgust washes over me.
The cursor is blinking at me. I blink back.
I tell him of my hands shaking uncontrollably,
The blade slipping onto the linoleum floor.
That I hear Ma’s voice as she calls from outside the bathroom door.
Are you okay, she says, and I wonder why she never bothered to ask that before
When I was being masticated between the teeth of my own desires and whims,
And robbed of myself.
I weep as hopelessness washes over me.
The cursor is blinking at me. I blink back.
He loves me, he loves me not.
The tissue paper falls.
His voice rings,
Put it in words, it’s the greatest thing.
Fifteen snorts and five shots of caffeine later,
I sit on his laptop
And see.
The cursor is blinking at me. I blink back.
I type but nothing comes out,
And I wonder where all the words went.
Maybe they are lost in the infinite space between my keyboard and the screen.
Then again, maybe I never truly found the words,
And they are still out there, floating in the perpetual abyss where words reside before we cage them.
The blankness is proof.
I don’t weep.
The cursor blinks at me. I blink at him.
Zaima is an anaerobically-respiring, bibliophilic bacterium who spends her free time weeping over bad author decisions in YA. Tell her shitty plots are okay at [email protected].