Andrea Gibson

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Your life at the prom where you’ll run home

in a snowstorm, chucking your last pair of heels

in a snowbank, realizing you are the only boy

you ever wanted to tear your dress off for.

Your life the first Christmas you spend alone. The years you learn

to build your family from scratch.

You highway streak of light

falling over and over for your hard life,

your perfect life,

your sweet and beautiful life.

You find me at the coffee shop,

at the movies, at the grocery store

buying comfort food.

You find me on dates,

which is terrible because on dates

I really try to appear…dateable.

Where did the romance go?

I think I might be trapped

in a miserable person’s body.

There is a world in which all the bad things

that happened didn’t really happen

This is a life without sunrise.

This is the shitty earth on its shitty axis.

This is the best advice for insomnia

anyone has ever given me: TRY TO STAY AWAKE.

So I try to hate this world.

And then I wait…

If I hadn’t sold it for its gold,

I would give her the class ring I wore

when I was still a girl

and taking good care of my cuticles.

If it hadn’t burned in a fire,

I’d give her the Valentine

from my first kiss—

Darling, when I gave you my heart,

I gave my life, my word

that it would not be the same heart

I had given before.

Then I heard the boy

praying in the wrong direction.

Why do they so often laugh

when they cry? Who taught them

to be ashamed of needing

more than water?

aybe it was when you were editing my book,

and you said something elitist like,

You can’t end every poem by repeating the last line,

or, You can’t have the word ‘moon’ or ‘firefly’

in every piece you write, and I screamed something like,

I’D RATHER HAVE A SKY WITHOUT A MOON IN IT

THAN A POEM WITHOUT A MOON IN IT, YOU UPPITY

THESAURUS-ADDICTED SNOW GLOBE FULL OF DANDRUFF.

Maybe it was the poly argument, your face going fire-engine red

the second I mentioned an old flame.