They call me Simmie;

 

I got the exs and oh’s from undeserving females.

 

They call me bro.

 

They call me waterfalls of charcoal on a once coal town with Ohio oil stains.

 

They call me ugly,

 

But they worship my country road curves

 

In shushed secret.

 

1-71 boasts a single tune: straight c’s for miles on 103.1

 

The max.

 

Every bend in every neck loses itself on my hourglass, one filled with time

 

Before it should have been given.

 

My sand sunk before I knew that I could be flipped

 

Into something other than a porcelain frame to be admired

 

Touched

 

Stained and

 

Dropped.

 

They call me Shalimar and Taj

 

They call me princess for Raj

 

I am a redneck

 

Racial nightmare.

 

I am every math teacher’s failed stereotype and my parent’s beautiful flop of

 

private school tuition

 

I am every store’s sweet suspect

 

I am every man’s favourite brazzer

 

I am every lover’s wanted doormat. I am available at 3 am for lullabied advice

 

and I give rides to friends who don’t treat me too nice.

 

I am a smell, like morning afters.

 

I am lit for ease and I release the pain we all feel when the cafeteria runs out of

 

chocolate milk

 

We all smell like Mary’s children; just spice no sugar. We pretend to dance

 

through coursework but end up tripping white lines into Shahs

 

I dance on upper lips, through the nose ring your mother hates and across the

 

bathroom tiles our foreheads kiss.

 

My hips shatter away any recollection of yesterday

 

I work my way through five rings on ears that won’t listen, and I burn eyes of

 

Revlon

 

Charcoal smoulder.

 

I weasel my way into crowded cars, wedged between what could have been

 

And what will be.

 

I am a woman of many seasons; we are all women of 17 summers--

 

Dolce sweet and juicy in our prime.

 

We are the smells inhaled after one night

 

One time

 

One afternoon.

 

The smell of faked indifference and casual perfume.

 

I am the synthetic sensation of your lipstick inside the skeleton chest we all know

 

you’re destroying

 

I am the staples that keep this plaid skirt together

 

I am the straightener steaming at 6:30 in the morning

 

I am the white man’s ignored vision of 5 foot two on Fridays in a new outfit.

 

I am the 8.99 foundation at Wal-Mart.

 

I am unoriginal

 

Nothing sounds like me, because I am not a thing, zero in a world of queen bey’s

 

and wannabes.

 

I do not speak in front of watery audiences

 

I am not yet a voice to be quoted.

 

My agent is the moon.

 

Late glows of iphone prophecies prompt sour diesel gas

 

And a foggy mirror.

 

I strawberry cough my way out of blue dreams and yesterday’s angst stares at

 

me from college ruled

 

And I think to my self:

 

Am I really all that special?

 

I stumble upon a trainwreck of unfinished precal exercises that haven’t been

 

touched yet and a pile of bio terms I know I’ll never remember

 

My term paper deems me inadequate, and I can only agree

 

I look down at my future best seller while Plato simmers in the summery haze I

 

refuse to leave behind

 

It lifts, and the tragic ink dances Indian.

 

Should I keep writing?

 

What makes for scribbles worth reading?

 

Reciting

 

Reeling

 

Rehearsing

 

Or respecting

 

No one will ever sound like me cause I will never be a thing

 

A style

 

A genre

 

A form

 

Or a structure.

 

I just believe in what I’ve wanted to remember.

 

I pick the wars I know I’ll never change

 

This anger isn’t real and that need for inspiration in this once coal town with ohio

 

oil stains turns into automatic arrogance

 

I’m made for a world that will match me with keys

 

Lit to turn me around

 

I, too, wait.

 

I, too, wait to become an object for change

 

The secrets I throw away sit around me in rings

 

I am the mosaic relief of once needed prayers

 

I am the go to for lonely nights and girlie fights

 

I am a waste of green cards and south side Chicago

 

Saved pennies.

 

I am brown skin sugar to be tasted,

 

Tested, and thrown away

 

But I do not perish, for I savour the mystery of me

 

I live for the spirits blown through the sunroof

 

And the awkward discretion of febreeze.

 

I stand here in front of you,

 

testing lines instead of blowing them,

 

Handing you the advice I should have taken when I was fresh in a school I had

 

swam in for miles:

 

Do not give up your ghosts or sell them to the roaches

 

Do not burn your lips on someone who wouldn’t notice

 

Give what you deserve, and if it’s crap then learn to live

 

Cause you only walk through your life

 

Not through hers, not through his.