A Poetry Outtake from Pet
Disclaimer
Number One:
Get the fuck out of my file folder, creep.
Whoever you are, I’m not writing for you.
Number Two:
I don’t.
I don’t hate my life
my mother
my father
my friends
my looks
my school.
I’m not poor. I’m not abused.
My parents are good parents.
I’m as glad they’re divorced as they are.
I just like to whine.
Who doesn’t?
Number Three:
SERIOUSLY.
Do you have no boundaries?
All my poetry is marked Private,
because it sucks,
and so do you,
if you’ve read this far.
O hai Kate!
You’re adorable and I mean it, even if
I do resent it sometimes,
Just,
you sat there across from me saying things,
you got a paper cut, I think, today — tragedy.
And I freeze.
Everything I can think to say
is wrong, and so
when I finally try to say something,
if I finally try to say something,
I stutter so much I sound like a woodpecker,
and you can’t understand a word of it,
and I have to repeat it,
and it gets worse every time.
Today, you’d think you’d just told me
your parents were getting divorced
and your dog died
and you wanted to fuck me
on the lunch table
now.
That’s how frozen I was
I am
Half the time in normal conversation.
You’re there and you’re talking,
and people talk all the time about alienation
and looking for deep human connection.
Shallow human connection
would be enough for me,
The kind of instant empathy
that makes you able
to say “Ow” and then
something funny
and your eyes meet
and you both laugh
and you know you’re both
friends
or both human, at least.
O hai Allie!
I heard you on the phone
with whoever it was,
maybe your mom,
and I’m sorry it made you feel that way,
like he’d torn out your heart and
stomped on it,
and you were walking around with no innards,
all the you gone.
I have a secret.
I’ve felt like that too,
kind of,
and I’ve never even dated anyone,.
and I didn’t tell anyone.
I win.
I hate you.
No, I just hate me.
O hai Amos!
You only kind of know I exist.
You smile when I say hi
because you don’t know me.
If you did you’d just
make that expression
that’s too polite not to smile
and too wary to smile and
mutter something and
move past.
I can tell this by how
you talk to your friends,
what you laugh at.
Meanwhile I want to fuck you
now
on the lunch room table,
or at least kiss you or touch you
or just keep remembering you exist.
Of Elsewhere 