She
Girl finds herself beached with insomnia’s paddles,
which She knows melt easily in salt water.
her life’s climaxes have plateaued.
She takes care not to cut delicate toes
on clamshell sacrifices. the other martyrs
of the ocean serve themselves as her dinner;
She used to think oyster a delicacy but the years
of living on this island have made her despise the taste.
She doesn’t care about pearls; She built a house from them.
it stands immaculate against the sand dunes, every one of its hinges
unused.
She sleeps well now since She’d rather not be awake;
and She is dreaming of Home. but Home is far from claustrophobic dorm rooms
and walls that close in during midterms.
her cornea correctness was taken for granted when she lived among oak tree branches,
dangling her legs among autumn breezes,
Zephyr untangling her hair with delicate fingers. She is forest child, but never knew
until roots were swept away with bad decisions.
her oak river raft adventuring gave way to currents which caught her unprepared,
and the paddles she had fashioned from her superstitious trances
began to disintegrate when she put them to use.
they melt so easily
in salt water.
now she dreams of scarlet solar systems interrupting
lavender asteroid belts. her corneas have slipped from planetary eyeballs,
have hidden behind lids, and melted surreptitiously//a regular Dalí:
a twisted and distorted existence.
her thoughts now droop with alabaster shimmering.
and cognac-colored missed connections solidify her defense mechanisms.
in college, you learn to spend your nights wrapped up in supernovas,
while Salvador-Dalí-dripping pupils devour galaxies. girls like us
saunter
into slumber,
and sleep well
because we are alone.
She, formerly called thoughts on a bad semester, was published in Issue 6 of Metaphor Magazine in the fall of 2016.
© 2016 by Marisa Adame