Alexis Diano Sikorski, from every overemotional teenager with a really bad crush

you left me bent, gravity-bound to you—

adrenaline scoring her nails down my back, an opera,
prima donna sustaining a quavering note of such urgency an organ is driven
through the mouth to spill teenage crush after teenage crush— terror: 

confine me to spaces so tight i have no choice but to stretch,
to break—
         emerge.

i was never an escape artist.

every day a figure drawing class and i know who your focus is on.
render me well, dearest pygmalion,
(paint me like one of your french girls)
and i’ll reveal myself to you,
you’ll carve me out of the obscure
then abandon me immediately—
i can’t waste a second more swallowing clay when it’s all i’m made of.

i imagine a brook and a meadow and a shining field somewhere stupid perfect
where i’d wear a white shift dress, lay around, and be admired.
later i ask you to ruin me— left fucked fettle, muted,
a shadow of the girl who thought she loved you.

make my face into anything else you want it to be as long as you don’t leave,
don’t leave, don’t leave— gorge yourself on plums and honey
ask an old guy what a fig tastes like
drink water clear from the source—
no need to mystify the details in the ordinary,
i promise you, present-tense can feel so good if you’ll please,
please, stay with me..

but aloud, you say:
hun, my name is limerence, and i’ll never be your first.

Alexis Diano Sikorski is a melodramatic Filipino-American dog mom, and all she wants is a really good massage. Her work has appeared in The Collapsar, Burning House Press, Moonchild Magazine, Vagabond City, Bombus Press, Queen Mobs Teahouse, Sigma Tau Delta’s The Rectangle, and more. She’s a bit of a crybaby, reads way too much fanfiction, and likes looking out of airplane windows. There’s a 98% chance she’s daydreaming right now.