I Am Great I Am Gone – Serena R

October 5, 2025

I wake up with: morning sickness,
varicose veins, swollen feet.
I throw up on the left side of the bed. It
splashes the legs of the table.
Years ago, I would have been flogged
with nine tails.
No one notices enough to keep track now.
No one notices I have been around driving
a lot with no license.
I am nothing but trouble.
I want a girl, any girl, but I guess a man will do.
You are my man, sunken eyed, doll-like.
You are so warm next to me.
Your throat glimmers.
I hate open doors. Once I saw my dad
take a power tool to his forearms and wrists.
He filmed it without crying.
Silence is a virtue, fortitude.
The motion of the saw created a lot of heat.
He even filmed it and the video seemed
to warp.
I get it.
What is living to me?
I shallow drowned in a plastic pool once. At four.
The water was warm. It was summer.
It felt like breathing in reverse:
the air hunger was soothing, maternal.
Later I asked a friend to smother me
with a hot wet rag.
The pressure released.
I am such a
BAD GIRL.
Things that moved me now enrage me.
What else?
It is all wrong.
I shatter the glasses methodically.
slam the doors. My possessions should save me
but all they want to do is watch.
It should mean more. It should.
I orgasmed for the first time wearing this dress
and now it is grey, limp, discarded.
I think it is all bigger than it seems.
The everyday winks at me,
spits in my face.
The things I see on my drives are so beautiful
and they pass so quickly at speed.
One of these days
I’ll miss a turn
right into a divider
into a
group of young
I think
if given the opportunity,
the world would choose
sex over everything.
Call the journalists,
I am going to do something sensational.
Voices are the only thing
worth doing for.