Hypotheticals
I
I pitied myself for weeks,
thinking you would line up someone else,
like a shooting gallery.
each head another target, each one
another bullseye. you shoot
and the crowd goes wild.
I’ve spat back up my popcorn.
II
I sold myself for three dollars,
given your low bet of two-fifty.
I snatched up the change,
I sunk down
to the shop, the little corner store we liked
to buy myself ice-cream.
Vanilla, white, pure, making you out
to be some distant memory
in chocolate leather.
III
I read out your texts, one by one
a marching order of your pretty words
step by step,
beautiful words hiding gunfires
in grey bubbles, each one shorter
shorter than the last.
I hated that.
IV
I’d see you out and about,
in your better clothes,
because you’d slipped out of my rags, I guess.
a fairy godmother hadn’t come for me, but still
I wish it could have been you, with the wand.
with the bibbidi-boppidi-boo.
V
I don’t have a story like these hypotheticals,
not that I wish I did.
I’m freeing myself out from those palms of his.
I’ll be writing poetics and moving onto other boys,
and he’ll be in streets, in shrouds, underneath clouds
and I’ve got no clue how he’ll handle things.
- Keeley Young