Fancy

2014

re-write of gwendolyn macewen's "1958"

2014

was a beautiful year 

where you parked yourself in bed 

next to the heater 

and cried for hours in your own personal hell, 

you 

disappointment of the century, your perfectly terrible 

body 

looped around the blankets, the pillows, along the 

mattress, and the smell, the smell  

of cheap cigarettes, and the smell 

the smell  

of booze and blood and depression - 

O, 

those guys spoke in alien tongues, and 

those girls said everything with their eyes that 

burned holes into your back, 

them in their- 

well, who has time to worry about what they're wearing 

when you think they're busy worrying about you, 

you 

in your ratty old sweatshirt and wrinkled jeans, 

those generic two year old sneakers and 

that black elastic, holding up your hair 

and what's left of your sanity- 

Someone was always the leader of the "freaks" and 

she taught you how to dismiss everything, 

to wear a mask far prettier 

 than the skin you wore; she 

was Delilah, she 

was Joan of arc, she  

was so sharp she pierced your soul, who went 

like you  

to Saint Malachy's Memorial High School where 

the boys goofed off and the girls  

gossiped faster than their lips could move, 

where everyone had messy buns and smelled of weed 

and you stared blankly, stared blankly 

and realized 

you had been dead for a while.