would you become my opposite & envelope me infinitely?
no. [my eyes are pepper shakers & every blink stings]
would you twist me until i close in on myself,
grounds churning, leaking every bottled contradiction,
until all that’s left are shriveled skins i can float on as diminutively as a ghost?
no. [you were never good at sacrifice, were you?]
when we were young you’d hoard every dollar of allowance because you were told
the green bills held value, & how could you ever give up something so precious?
when your fish died you sat stunned & stared at its bloated corpse,
bobbing as if all it ever was was a scaled filament of buoyant flesh
& you couldn’t accept it. but i am no fish i am no fool
& you can no longer keep me safe, stashed away in your archives
[so let me go let me go] i have nothing more to offer you,
not here, not in this fenced in yard, not under this
titanium dioxide sky. so would you hold my hand until we reach
the edge of the boardwalk, and wave goodbye as i dive under the waves?
there is only one answer: you would not disappoint me.
Natasha Bredle (she/her) is a young (but fortunately not starving) artist based in Ohio. She writes about what she thinks about, which is really too much for her poor brain. You can find her work in Aster Lit, Trouvaille Review, and Aurora Journal to name a few.
Painting by. Sidney Herbert Sime