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By Lilly Sayenga
You throw me in a cavalcade
Geraldine is my grandmother’s name
The world around me looks all the same
And I let it wash and flow into a pinkish reddish strain
Nothing matters to me the way that
Everything always gets in the way
Of sparkling rose love
And oily keyboards
I can’t explain why none of it makes any sense at all
It never does
I throw myself into it and I hate it always
You push and care for me but I am myself and I’m stuck here
I hate that there isn’t much I can do about that ultimately
And the Shirley temples of the world always shine and shine
Their cherries so red
And myself perpetually dead
Married to the idea that I will be eternally an old maid
A notion I conceived when I was thirteen
When I suppose I realized
No one wants me
I take that and run and Shirley temples and I are a pair
I sip in the sweetness but still I am scared
Of the wideness of the world and the smallness of me
The fact that nothing can mean anything
Unless I decide it it seems
So I sparkle and watch the dancing light reflect upon the glass
Whose condensation feels the need to bleed into my hands
And I suppose that it’s violent
These images that chance
Upon my eyes and my feelings that feel the need to pass
Into words that leak worse than the melting ice
Nothing ever matters unless I tell it to which is nice
But I guess I am lonely
And I feel weak and young
And I guess I just sit here and rot til I’m done
So it’s a violent sweetness
A grenade of syrup on my tongue
It explodes
I implode
And still I think of you
Ordering after me
After you tease
As my parents watch and I feel immature and silly
A performer in this life
And always
And bereft
I’m just a nobody no Shirley
yet I bring you this text
Spilling out the sparkling cherry that bleeds
I hate that nothing is ever how it seems
It hurts to drink something so sweet
It hurts to know that these thoughts won’t retreat
I deceive myself
I see the conceit
The redness of love and the blackness of bleak
How unkindly they mix
How lovely the maraschino skewered
bleeds
I guess I can’t love you
I guess I can’t wait
I guess I’ll allow myself this temple as a failsafe
And your reflection bounces on the glass
And so does mine
The ice melts with my silence
Better than glass being broken
Better than violence
Better than what I imagine to be right
I’d rather sink to the bottom
An orb of vivid sweetness battered down
I guess it’s fine
The sweetness hurts me all the time
