Why?

For what reasons did

you choose me to haunt?

A million women

vying for your attention

and something in me

caught your eye.

Was it a glimmer of light 

or pools of darkness beneath?

I’ve met the ones like you.

They look better than they do in the movies.

Hair perfectly coiffed, sculpted physique, a personality

fit like a well-tailored mask. The mask melts into the skin after a while if

presented with it enough. You almost forget that it’s there.

I threw myself into trash hoping I’d reek enough for you to notice me.

And you did like I expected you to. They always do.

when you smell and flies are surrounding you, it’s easier for them to digest.

Like rats and the subway, they’re addicted to mess. Because beside it, they’re a

brightly lit Winter ornament, the ones shaped like stars that sit perfectly

atop a tree.

Thankfully, I caught a glimmer of your star the first time we met,

and although it became a formless mass in my mind, sometimes the light would hit

it just so and the shape would pop back into my mind’s eye, if only for a moment.

Now I’m nursing this huge bruise. I am a bruise. I am only a fraction of what I

was a month ago, only a slither of myself left underneath the dye and makeup

used to cover my realness.

For you. And her, and him and him. For everyone but me.

So what do I do? I sit here, alone in my void, hoping to see myself again, to

cleanse myself of my transgressions,

to have my soul reappear as

light in the dark.

To hope that next time,

I’ll grow a spine so prickly that others

know that I am never to be digested again.