Pretty cool for a kid who watched
too much Disney channel
and threw so many peace signs
at Polaroids my Nana
had to give me a nickel
to stop. Amoebas with attitude
sashaying through a sea of
autotuned pink, pinky
promise pink, gum-poppin’ pink.
Now muted tones like bone,
ecru, beige. I’m afraid I’m plain
as a stack of blank stationary —
I want someone to sense
I’m special, and I want
that specialness beyond
any specialness imagined:
a god you can understand
wouldn’t be a god worth worshiping.
I want to pick the lock
of my childhood and find
the girl I never was
smiling, somewhere
inside her a celestial savannah
sprawls with neon creatures
so pretty its violent
to want them
to be anything except
a pelt. I know
she doesn’t exist — still
I stumble through
the tall grasses looking for
where she would’ve
dropped her spear.
— LEXI PELLE
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