"Taking Xanax at IKEA with your extended family"
A plastic bonsai tree sits next to a real one in a display
wondering if it was really okay
to feel this different than its companion.
Real trees look healthier
& appearance is important!
The bark is clear and rugged,
matured and developed
but that medicated plastic tree
looks slimy and cheap
My body is just as bleak
full of tears, tar, & sleet
It's separated from me
& I'm hundreds of miles away
Underneath, the tree has no deep growth
it sits by itself–
wondering if anyone can tell the difference between itself
& a living, growing being.
Familiar thoughts of disappoint
& self loathing are rooted in me
These roots are strong and deep
& just like your dirty habits:
they will not break
& they won't go away.
I took my medicine with the pretending bonsai in hand
in the yard, it sits with the other trees
waiting for something that won't ever happen.
“Loft Party”
Sometimes, it’s the way you style your hair
or your silhouette in a crowd of people.
It’s a strange parallel
an eerie mirrored front
A smile that breaks my heart
because it reminds me of the start.
Alone in a crowd of people,
I felt salvaged in thinking
that someone so dead
was resembled by living.
“Visitor”
Amorphous and poring
he is plucking strings
and picking through my records.
He is the thoughtful specter of a houseguest.
Always at my window perched
tapping and watching me sleep
I always see him between the trees
and at the corners of gas stations
he looks lost and disheveled
like god dropped him here
without a moment's notice.
He takes the thin, silver cord
that connects my body to this Earth
and frays it over and over
because his is already severed.
He caresses it like a noose
and it puts awful ideas inside of me.
I have wasted years
trying to understand what you say–
frankly, you sounded like a ghost
when you were alive.
Surely, it's better off this way.
There's always a draft in your place
cold empty air where you used to be.
There's a gap that you created
just to torment me.
“Sitting in the back of the classroom by yourself because really– who would
actually want to be your friend?”
I think I'm in a glass box
on Monday mornings, for show
and on Saturday nights to ridicule.
I have nothing more to do
than to bide my time
sleep until supper
and drive back home.
I haven’t been to class in three months
but your sneer through the slip of a curtain
laughing and having fun without me
is just enough.
“Windowsill”
I've been trying to get myself out of my head
nothing seems to work,
I find myself in bed for days instead.
Finding the only comfort
in a little brown cat
that hops on my windowsill
I count the notches on her back.
One two three four
someone's given her a sour score.
Pussy and leaking, her flank lies flat
mewling at my window, a shoulder chipped at.
The window shows a sad little movie
of animal control rolling down the street.
I already know what's about to happen
I pray to the god I'm due to meet.
There is a terrified, inhumane noise.
I want to go back to object permanence
closing my eyes and pretending to sleep.
None of this is worth the shaky hands
and bitter burning in your throat
the little parts of giving up made me weak
just like the bits of viscera on my street.
Everything you touch,
and everyone you miss
kind thoughts and intentions
have always turned to shit.
I'm afraid of redemption,
because it means I'm first incorrect.
I'm bedridden by choice,
hiding, a wreck.
It's precious to love something
but that doesn't protect it.
If you need to ask yourself this question,
you probably should've left it.
it's better not to bother.
-Emily Sipiora
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