Image description: three panels of wood, seemingly worn down with dark smudges.
By Amanda Gaines
on the hottest day of the summer, my body decides
to fucking lose it. Wails
on a phone line to its beloved, daydreams
colliding into a brick wall at fifty MPH, abandons
the house of a best friend without explanation. I wish I could explain
the fleas burrowing beneath my wood floors, the torn hole
in the tire of my lemony Volkswagen, the accordion list
of unsent emails & academic protocols & untended sisters
a thousand miles from me back east, the partly part-time job
I picked up to keep the lights on. My fear of being too much & never
enough. Truth, a friend tells me, isn’t confession. Desire
usually does the trick. I try--I want to watch my man
bike down a black diamond
in sexy silver leggings. To play Two-Dots & eat ice cream, to give
my stretch marks beautiful girl names. To book it
back to Appalachia, to find a small cabin stocked with bath bombs
& cheese puffs & VHS copies of horror movies to help me
sleep. With a disco ball & speaker system that bumps
Pinkshift on repeat. With every stuffed animal I’ve ever kissed
on the forehead without shame.
In the real, rain plays withholding. Girls I once dropped
it low with in hot pants get married to mediocre men. My sister
buys her first car & I am not there to witness her smile
overshadow the skyline. My mother texts me
You can always come home. I pull out
my hair in a feedback loop, leave evidence of loss
everywhere I go. I want to scream
in an empty room until my esophagus splits its seams. To pretend
I still have a say over my future. To be held
like a child, to have nothing
to prove. To don stilettos & get in a bar fight with J.D Vance
knowing the right kind of hooked anger
can bring any bully to their knees. To feel the pressure of a tongue
between my legs, look down
& find my man ordering take-out. My idea of luxury:
not begging for what I need. How luxurious it would be
to paint my nails with glitter in candle-lit room with friends & talk
art, fearless. A luxury: a self-cleaning stove, a heart
that can give without breaking. A storm cloud that lingers
over my Oklahoma threshold, promising
Not soon--now.
Amanda Gaines is an Appalachian writer and Ph.D. candidate in CNF in Oklahoma State University's creative writing program. Her poetry and nonfiction are published or awaiting publication in Barrelhouse, Willow Springs, Redivider, New Orleans Review, Southeast Review, The Southern Review, Juked, Rattle, Pleiades, SmokeLong Quarterly, Ninth Letter, and Superstition Review.