welcome to staying awake

hello! 

I can’t come to the phone right now. 

please leave a message. 

hello! 

I can’t come to the phone right now due to the crippling depression–

state of the country–

natural disasters– 

threats to my safety– 

pressure from my loved ones who love me on a budget– 

traffic on the network. 

please call back later. 

hello! 

I can’t come to the phone right now. 

my attention has been directed elsewhere,

heart hammering, 

hands gripped around a candlestick like I’ve been stayed by 

colonel mustard in the conservatory, 

blood pooling on the floor

call that the miss scarlet tax. 

if I could just make it to the study where I know no man would corner me, 

no man would look for me, 

because why would I get an education just to make 84 cents on the dollar? 

I got no cents; you got no sense, 

so I reach for that rope I’ve been saving. 

hello! 

I can’t come to the phone right now. 

I’m trying to scrounge up dinner from the leftovers that still smell consumable, 

at home with something usable, 

controllably mutable, 

morphing and shifting and shaping itself into something that fits 

neatly inside my stomach 

but I am hollow, 

easy to swallow but hard to follow, 

watching those in power siphon away my rights to life 

like gas out of a car that’s already running on empty. 

your thousand– 

million– 

billion– 

gallon tank doesn’t need anything else from me anyway!

hello! 

I can’t come to the phone right now,

but answer me this: 

do you see me as human? 

or do you see me as a womb, 

an oven, 

a chicken coup, 

a pigsty to roll around in and then blame me for the mess, 

the stench, 

the sheer pervasiveness of all this unholy rot that clings to the bottom of my shoes. 

do you see me as a vessel for sin, 

for depravity, 

for comedic relief or fodder for your fetishes, 

only allowed to exist if I’m on a screen you can jerk off to. 

you’ll watch me go at it on your tv in the privacy of your living room 

but god forbid I hold my girlfriend’s hand in public.

hello! 

I can’t come to the phone right now. 

it seems I’ve crushed it in my hand, 

but the doctors won’t remove the glass from where it’s embedded in my fingers 

because they like the way the shards make my blood sparkle, 

summon sharks in these women-infested waters, 

and I’m mad and heart-broken too, like you, 

but we want different things. 

hello!

hello! hell–

he-hello-hello! hello! 

HELLO! 

can you hear me? 

CAN I SPEAK? 

throat raw from tears shed, 

from fearful heart to angry head, 

from frozen eggs to cattle bred, 

and with my words so mark my womb 

you better run, red! 

hello!

I can’t come to the phone right now 

because it’s personal, 

and it’s always been personal. 

my wrists ache with the memory of shackled funeral pyres, 

sacred fires, 

weaponized faith always falls hard and fast, 

and I think I’ve seen this movie before, 

something about a white house falling on someone’s sister. 

blinked once, twice you missed her, 

demonized because I kissed her, 

soft-spoken, you dismissed her. 

witches deemed wicked lose lives for the sake of complacency, 

for a society built on bones that bans hormones and hasn’t outgrown 

its propensity for violence. 

if to err is human and to bellow is inevitable, 

what must be born in the aftermath and mourned in the silence? 

hello. 

I can’t come to the phone, 

so what now?

11/7/24 9:27pm