by Jacklyn Attaway. 2008. All rights reserved.
I whisper incantations as I cross my threshold, Home
again, home again, jiggity jig.
I never let anyone sweep my feet.
I don’t let the food on my plate touch.
I menstruate during the full moon.
I eat the coconut-covered marshmallow shell before I eat the
chocolate cake and cream-filled center of a snoball.
I whip my thighs with a leather belt to make myself cry when
I can’t.
I collect sand from every beach I’ve visited in old perfume
bottles.
I practice a tap dance time-step when I’m bored or nervous.
I fantasize about being lost naked in the woods.
I lick the nectar from honeysuckles.
I still play with Barbie dolls.
I feel my teeth sharpen in the winter.
I save every fortune from every fortune cookie I have gotten
and sometimes the fortunes of others.
I make excuses to go home and masturbate.
I suntan in graveyards.
I only like pistachio ice cream if it is a pale green.
I believe the whistle of the 3am train is the veil of
transition to another realm.
I talk to your picture and sometimes kiss the printed image
of your face.
I sleep alone in binding kinky lingerie.
I sometimes go to bed with a leather belt tightened and
bound around my wrists.
I sleep with your t-shirt like a 13 year-old girl as if by
some way of contagious magic, it will bring you to me.
I leave my body at night and fly to your window, walk the
manicured lawns of your neighborhood that no one spends any time on.
I wake up with grass in my toes.
I go to the door three times a day because I hear knocking,
even though no one is there.
I sit alone in this dark room wearing a blindfold, waiting
for you to remove it.