On Being Left | Ron Riekki

She’s ashamed of my eyes.
She’s left my eyes to the fish.

My lips are abandoned buildings.
My jaw is Detroit.
My feet live below the poverty line.
I am trapped in traps.

She is made of milk and jewels and wind.

I am an X-ray.
My abdomen begs for ghosts, wish it could at least have that.

She dyes her life red, a red that reminds me of earthquakes.

I am lost on the inside of the vase.

She is a Scylla if it was etched in perfection and

I am a dark scab.

She paints pictures with breaths.

I have given my mouth to the dead.

She is the water in movies.

I am deceased and desist.
I wish I could reinvent the time machine, make it work better than our current one: meth.

She would mess up my hair, turn them into vegan cannibals.

I lust for lust.

She stands to my left, somewhere, unseen.
She is Aishwarya Rai Bachchan’s Sushmita Sen.

I am an animal and a nickname.

The bricks of you get taken when they leave.
A wall that erupts from umbilical to pharynx.
How your lungs get hung, dangling.

And she is the clouds.