crossing guard

I willed myself

to be all…

diaphanous,

abject & bare

people

I swore I loved

crowded

to throw shade

across

my limbs

labor day

my legs were on fire

going down was harder

than going up

jake did his nervous laugh

but still told

the terrible joke

i convalesced

in the gray bedroom

green crayon scrawled across

stone-washed walls

before meditating

by the pool

that gave

chris roberts a rash

i imagined a disco ball

spinning in total silence,

wore the widow’s hat,

then returned to the room

where i spilled secrets

like i was running

out of time

aphrodisiac null

absolutely homogenous

this lost love warfare

resplendent in nothing

but at any cost

i wanted

a story

with gemini envy,

i peel

my feet from the floor

the worst waste imaginable

stacks itself at the gate

like a bitch,

i wish

to levitate

float to all the sad people

in their hollowed hovels

and bless their belongings

but alas

this life is

unbecoming of me

i hate to admit that

at the apex of my spiritual development

i look like this

i drag the rug outside

sick from images

which haunt me

by way of

their negatives

forever guilty

forever crawling under the capsized log of personal history

like “where is my moment?”

my thigh high socks always

all covered in dirt

i am not the type of woman

to say “soil”

in fact, i avoid

that type of man

and how should a wife be?

given to moods

erin tweets about ashwaghanda

& lamictal

well, secret societies,

you are not so secret anymore

now, are you?

oh, omega

oh, omega

oh, omega

oh where oh where

is

my award

Shy Watson’s fiction appears in Fence, Southwest Review, Joyland and elsewhere. She wrote “Jeff! Bess!” for SAD HAPPENS edited by Brandon Stosuy (Simon & Schuster, 2023). She earned her MFA from University of Montana.