blood pt 2
✧ 2023 Gearhart Poetry Contest Finalist ✧
could you please let the duolingo owl know that we broke up?
you’re both haunting my spam folder
and i don’t want your language anymore.
how do you say “no one should date the embodiment of their id” in [language redacted]?
you wanted me to scoop out my body’s soil and replace it with yours
were you surprised or disappointed to find i’m entirely composed of kraft spirals and malaise?
a bee stung me yesterday
first since childhood and now i’m forced to connect to that
and i’m feeling homicidal because i’ve stubbed my toe
and because you told me i had no self respect and you were
right.
now i’d like to be back on that 8 minute flight
8 hours before you told me that.
contemplating existence as usual over soft leather sheen of ocean surface
imagining it breaking like pudding skin & cool rush of quick descent
the freedom of a death at the hands of someone else’s mistake—
not my problem.
i thought maybe if i try noticing a new building each morning
i’d be a better person in a month.
and at the spa they scrubbed away every skin cell you’ve ever touched
but when i saw the girls with their mothers, all nude and smiling
i cried in the jacuzzi—
if i had been those girls, your blood wouldn’t be in mine now.
sometimes i still know what it is to be loved
when pulling litter clumps from between helpless cat toes
and when i google “still ok to wear overalls one strap?” i feel a little like i know myself again.
CAITLIN GILLMETT is a poet & educator based in Hoboken, NJ. A graduate of Boston College, she teaches high school English and writes and performs poetry throughout Manhattan and Brooklyn. Currently, Caitlin is working on her forthcoming chapbook, blood & breakfast, an exploration of intimacy, mundanity, and existentialism.
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