< Issue 4 >
Dear Anonymous
by Sarah Myles Spencer
You were cut in perfect lines
on a mirror cracked from all the tapping,
a single tear upon a razor blade
that had not yet drawn blood.
It was an unromantic winter inside the walls
of your section eight apartment, garbage
littered concrete; everything gray,
everything hopeless.
You told me the other children laughed
at you on your first day of kindergarten,
that you came from a place where the wind
makes instruments out of abandoned praise,
that your first kiss was a glass pipe
left out like an after school snack
by your mother, that it was the most
loving gesture she ever made.
You told me your first love
was a prostitute named Edna.
You still think of her every now and then:
how you both dreamed of leaving these loveless
streets behind you, and how she was beaten
to death by two junkies with an old rusted pipe
over five dollars and an emptied bag of blow.
You say we are but thankless insects,
scattered like rock and smashing fist,
waiting to be driven from creation, by a boy
who kisses crack pipes and calls it spring.
You tell me you never meant to hurt me,
that girls like me don't grow on trees
where you come from, that stealing is next
to second nature, and your conscious has long
been resigned to a cold and unforgiving grave.
You told me you used to hide
in the moldy cellar of your grandmother's
house, pretending to be a bird with gilded wings,
pretending your uncle's stale smelling flesh
was an apparition, just like the one
you ultimately became to me.
Dear Anonymous
by Sarah Myles Spencer
You were cut in perfect lines
on a mirror cracked from all the tapping,
a single tear upon a razor blade
that had not yet drawn blood.
It was an unromantic winter inside the walls
of your section eight apartment, garbage
littered concrete; everything gray,
everything hopeless.
You told me the other children laughed
at you on your first day of kindergarten,
that you came from a place where the wind
makes instruments out of abandoned praise,
that your first kiss was a glass pipe
left out like an after school snack
by your mother, that it was the most
loving gesture she ever made.
You told me your first love
was a prostitute named Edna.
You still think of her every now and then:
how you both dreamed of leaving these loveless
streets behind you, and how she was beaten
to death by two junkies with an old rusted pipe
over five dollars and an emptied bag of blow.
You say we are but thankless insects,
scattered like rock and smashing fist,
waiting to be driven from creation, by a boy
who kisses crack pipes and calls it spring.
You tell me you never meant to hurt me,
that girls like me don't grow on trees
where you come from, that stealing is next
to second nature, and your conscious has long
been resigned to a cold and unforgiving grave.
You told me you used to hide
in the moldy cellar of your grandmother's
house, pretending to be a bird with gilded wings,
pretending your uncle's stale smelling flesh
was an apparition, just like the one
you ultimately became to me.
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