prompt: complex (a complex poem)

the little voices
inside of her head
don’t dare to go away even 
when she tells them to

don’t let them break you
don’t let them define you

but from a young age
we learn to judge
to look down upon people 
who aren’t multi-talented, multi-faceted
who smell like whiskey and cigarettes
who don’t have a degree

and there she is wasting away
wishing she were any place
but inside this four-walled
300-seats 
claustrophobium of the arts

but you need it—
you fucking need it

but need is different than want
and all she wants is a chance
to close her eyes 
and not study astronomical 
equations
paradoxical abrasives
that scratch away
what she really cares about

and she’s yelling
at them now

shut up & let me be

but she’s a little too—
no that’s not the problem
wishful prayers leave her mouth 
and tickle the air for a moment 
then fade away with the wind

and they never stop judging
while she never stops yelling
and four years down the road
all she has is a degree in analyzing rhetoric
and a bad case of anxiety 
that ripples through
her like a lightening storm

a tiny interlude

interludes of life and love
in a dark seedy bar
with burly men with thick muscles & mustaches
yelling at televisions
“what the fuck, play ball correctly you idiots”
downing their beers in one long gulp

you were next to me
i eyed you, checked you out 
with my secret sideways glance
a man with a crooked smile, big hands,
and eyes that so endless
that they’d steal your soul
if you stared into them too long

i think you knew i was looking at you
because you scooted next to me
ordered two double jack & cokes
and slid one next to me.
“for you,”
as if it was a medal for being
the prettiest thing in the room

soon we were laughing 
you liked my smile
and tickled my hand 
with your fingers
i thought you were mine
for one night
but it was only twenty minutes
in the bathroom stall

and

i know you’ve done this before
you’ve made a girl’s body
weep with passion
swell with simple joy
like a jar sitting
under the faucet
overflowing with water
and running down the sides
intriguing

until i’m breathless
my hot sticky breath
smelling like the bottom
of a hobo’s shoe soaked in everclear
into the crook of your neck

you untangle yourself from
my dangling drunken limbs

and tell me,
“see you around.”

and i stare at the smudged
linoleum floor seeing dirt
in my reflection

he greeted me
with a smile
that melted my
bulletproof heart (enclosed in a brick palace
with guards who held swords, guns,
anything that would inflict some sort of damage)
into a pool of sin
laced with kerosene & pulled dreams from
the bottom of a dank wishing well
dreams of a happy place
a man and a woman
smiles a plenty creeping
across the face

but everything was twisted convoluted
screwed up like a knot you can’t untie
lies spilled from his lips
like a mess of boiling water & foam from overcooking

and happiness was a thousand-mile
plane ride away among perfect white clouds
away from my life—

he set me on fire the first chance he got.