In a memoir you might someday write, you’ll explore the phenomenon of mysterious girls—the ones you tried to mimic by matching their apathy, evaporating your own happiness and expecting it to be beautiful—bait for bliss and boys. This memoir would be critically acclaimed, but that would imply the meaning of ‘critical’, of which there is confusion:
definition one: expressing judgements—as in your thought process
when meeting the mirror,
or definition two: life-threatening—as in a car crash results in critical condition;
you no longer have tonsils for airbags in the accident that is your own speech.
This memoir would be a collection of criticality to the point of paralysis—permanent piranha on the spine, piñata full of cobwebs, plaster inches from swallowing you into its walls—
albeit bait for bliss and boys.
When did sadness become the selling point; when did it become a sales pitch at all?
Damn it to hell.
Mystery doesn’t suit someone like you—someone with so much fire; your spine was made of swords—yes, before, but they weren’t made for igniting and ingesting like a carnival act. Your sweetness is not as cheap as the cotton candy, not supposed to be spun in a tired machine.
Mystery doesn’t suit someone like you—someone with so much wisdom, someone who can convince the world of the infinite wonders within themselves, within the weather, within Heaven.
Geode of a girl, how can you survive the current if you blend in with the mud? In a memoir you might someday write, you’ll explore the phenomenon of mysterious girls, and it will sound so similar that
they will think you plagiarized mine.
Karissa Seibel is an eighteen-year-old poet from Cincinnati, Ohio. Her work has appeared in publications such as Eve Poetry Magazine, Silver Linings Anthology, and Train River Poetry: Spring 2020. Karissa is a curator for Savant Poetry and Pack Poetry, Instagram poetry communities, and she is a Literary Submission Editor for Kalopsia Literary Journal. More of Karissa’s poetry can be found on her Instagram portfolio: @karissa_thinks_in_ink.
