I Was the Dancer - Parenthetical Girls

soiled my jeans lie in heaps beneath me

blood marrs the sheets and they stain so easily

swollen wrists, knees, and you swelled inside me

and it took nine months to destroy my body

I was the dancer

my head filled with laughter

and then the disaster

you came sometime after

I was young then

full of grace then

but oh, resentments

l.

o.

v. e.

scratched your name into me

f.

a.

c.

e.

and it’s traces of me

curls round your cheeks, christ, you looked just like me

when you took nine months to destroy my body

now I’m in my bed

you tore me asunder

and years after labor

its all I remember

I was young then

full of grace then

but oh, resentments