They must have smelled it on me:
that I wasn’t myself
but an amalgamation of
all the girls I wished I was.
a modern-day Frankenstein’s monster
with bad highlights—
and I wondered why
the walls of my body
never felt like a home
Always another plate to shatter
always another dinner to burn
and scrape into the garbage
hollowstomached
A girl scout at the corner store
said she liked my purple hair
and I said thanks, I used to be you
racing up and down that dark church hall
pissing off Helen’s mom
with every unwitting step.
by the way, you never stop
seeing yourself as a girl
you only start remembering
to call yourself a woman
I asked her for
a box of samoas
and she looked up me
with a gentle resignation:
we call them something different now.
MADDY SNEEP's writing has been featured by Bullshit Lit, Zero Readers, The Passionfruit Review, and others. Her visual art was most recently on exhibit at the Kolaj Institute in New Orleans, LA. She lives in Austin, TX with her two cats who inspire her to work less and lounge more. WWW.MADDYSNEEP.NET
