watch your back.
guard it- any surface would do, a wall, a pillow, the back of a friend. you don't want to be a beached pink dolphin, smooth, supple flesh frozen for the pitchfork of a twilight devil to rake her exposed back.
in sleep there are no waves to carry you away from the danger and your flippers don't work on land. your family can't hear your squeaking cries, the air doesn't carry your pathetic sound to them like water does.
people say you have a lovely smile. you do, your cheeks won't let you drop it, your lips don't let you rest, and when you open your mouth to speak it curls upwards even when you're crying from the gut-devouring ache in your insides and your back smarts in the water where lines are slicked across in the pattern of sashimi, even then people say, "oh look she's smiling for you, say hello! do a flip! oh, how clever! did you know these creatures are hyper-intelligent?" and you whiz on by, careening in the bitter chlorinated water in practised dances that trap no prey but the bemused laughs and gasps of strangers who tap pointedly on your glass cage to do it again.
watch your back. you worry that one day, it'll really split open like a sliced block of cod and when there's blood in the water, the sharks will come. and they want you to be an escape artist on top of being a gymnast.
YOU ARE READING
i'll never be a poet
Poetryand here's the pretentious proof an ongoing anthology of the poetry of nobodi.
