Get Better, Get Bent

Lunge longingly toward love,
hung fondly from above,
shrug strongly for to shake off
the thought of who hates me
and what am I not?
My stomach sits in knots,
Begs the question:
Am I a valentine or just somebody’s after-thoughts?
We are taught: “teasing means they like you”.
“Absence makes the heart grow fonder”.
“Love is hard work”, “the strongest love’s a little blue”.
If feeling something for anyone
is that much of a labor, you’ve taken
a detrimental misstep in your existential walk-about on your path to
spiritual enlightenment-
I mean-
find the thing you fear the most in
yourself and frighten it.
You have thoughts in your head you don’t dwell on,
frame it into focus and tighten it.
Taught love to oneself
is fraught with your shoved-aside hells-look not for love outside-
for you sit short-sighted insecurities
upon carefully constructed shelves.
Govern the cell you dwell-
adorn the walls the way the way you like-shove the gray, pallid cement from your view in pure spite.
You-you’re o.k.
You-you’re alright.
Me, I’ve been uptight,
All night, lips wrapped round a bottle of wine;
me and you though,
me and you’ll be fine.
Wrapped arms ’round waits ready
to be loved,
waists that’ve faced faces,
annihilated traces, of an ugly
contemptuous love.
That starved love that bites and gnashes-leaving an image of yourself in bloody-worn gashes.
In the death of this rotten,
ill-begotten love-
salvation in its ashes.

By Andie Simpson

Featured in Basement Babes, Issue 13