Pocket Men

A rectangle of light that shows my romantic shopping list. I recoil from the vanity. A man in a
mirror, a man with a big car, a man with a big house or a big fish or a big d-
ecision to make.
Here you are.
Don’t look away, it’s all sick it’s all vain but here you are, looking anyway. Here you are, hunting
witty pickup lines & a face worth trusting with your time, your body, your apartment number.
You’re vain too and you are here to be judged, don’t pretend you don’t know what goes on in these
bright rooms.
Line yourself up (you sicken me you sicken yourself)
and you’ll be ranked against the one before and the one after and all the endless scrolling and the
flicking of left or right will mean less than you can imagine.
You are a show horse in a stall.
Don’t you judge her for a shot that went live on Tinder first, Instagram second, and Facebook
never. That’s a family app, these pictures belong at the auction.
Long term, open to short term.
Here he is.
Looking for something casual, here’s a picture of the road I live on, my baby brother, my friends
from high school and 8 little facts about me: age, work, height (since that matters), do I drink do I
smoke here’s my religion and my school and my program.
I’ll throw in my hopes and dreams if we get to three messages.
I invite you to stalk my Instagram, and maybe that’ll satiate you until we over-sharers learn what
to crop out and when to cop out.
A casual use of a dangerous word but you could show up on my road and I could show up on yours
and we’d be predators and not strangers and maybe a story on the news if we’re lucky.
What a pair we’d make.
Hey, I love The Office too, God I feel like I know you so well.
Let’s meet up.
Here I go.
Only in public, only when its light out, only somewhere I’ve been before. Six people know but is
that enough? I’ll tell my mom too, just in case.
Another date? Where’d you meet this one?
Wonderland, not a real place. I frequent real places but maybe these men don’t, they only exist in
my pocket when my self-esteem’s swan song becomes everyone’s problem
These things come in waves. The swan is a phoenix often on the brink of flames.
I swear I love myself most of the time, but the men in the light love me always, love me or leer at
me it’s all the same it’s all attention it’s all me, baby.
What do I need to prove?

---

Cassandra Sarah Pegg (she/her) is an Honours English Literature and Psychology student at Concordia University, Montreal. She dabbles in poetry but thinks of herself as a fiction writer through and through, and is a serial hobbyist. Cassandra is the co-founder/co-EIC of Crab Apple Literary. She has fiction and poetry published in Soliloquies Anthology, pixie literary magazine, Dollar Store Magazine, Metatron Press’ #MicroMeta Instagram series, All Worlds Wayfarer, and Gnashing Teeth Publishing.