I tell my fiance I wish I were a worm so that I could wriggle around him all day long
a professor said once
sometime the biggest
tragedy is getting what you
want so when I finally turn into a worm
my friend says “How Kafkaesque” and I beam
with pride my fiance
takes me home in a jar filled
with store bought dirt
synthetic and too clean I press my nose
against the glass of our old life
like a dinosaur exhibit of things I have
never known but
want to touch all the same
on his sofa he lets me out
and it’s smaller than I expected
he holds up a single finger and I am wrapped
around it and I wonder if anything has
really changed I crawl up his arm through a forest
of prickling hairs, across the knobby mountains
of his shoulder and up
his neck. I kiss him three times, but he can’t tell
the difference.
“Where are you going?” he couldn’t hear me
even if I told him, so I don’t bother
as I wriggle into his ear his thoughts lay out before
me like a deck of tarot cards the lover is upside down
there’s a boy holding cups but i don’t
remember what that one means the grim reaper
a polaroid of me a polaroid of his mother,
mixed into the deck it’s warm in in here
in a way that is comfortable but I also know will kill me
I don’t want to leave but I know I cannot stay
sometime the biggest
tragedy is getting what you
want so when I finally turn into a worm
my friend says “How Kafkaesque” and I beam
with pride my fiance
takes me home in a jar filled
with store bought dirt
synthetic and too clean I press my nose
against the glass of our old life
like a dinosaur exhibit of things I have
never known but
want to touch all the same
on his sofa he lets me out
and it’s smaller than I expected
he holds up a single finger and I am wrapped
around it and I wonder if anything has
really changed I crawl up his arm through a forest
of prickling hairs, across the knobby mountains
of his shoulder and up
his neck. I kiss him three times, but he can’t tell
the difference.
“Where are you going?” he couldn’t hear me
even if I told him, so I don’t bother
as I wriggle into his ear his thoughts lay out before
me like a deck of tarot cards the lover is upside down
there’s a boy holding cups but i don’t
remember what that one means the grim reaper
a polaroid of me a polaroid of his mother,
mixed into the deck it’s warm in in here
in a way that is comfortable but I also know will kill me
I don’t want to leave but I know I cannot stay
Bleah Patterson (she/her) is a queer poet who was born and raised in Texas. She explores generational and religious trauma in her work, as well as compulsive heteronormativity, disability visibility, and class issues. A current MFA candidate at Sam Houston State University, her work is featured in he Hyacinth Review, The Texas Review; the tide rises, the tide falls; Anti-Heroine Chic, Fifth Wheel Press, Fish Barrel Review; and elsewhere.
