This world will erase you,
he said, but it wasn’t a threat.
Shadows nip at your knees to peel open:
gore of glitter flecked with black
salt, to protect. It’s the way they explain
to make wounds seem artistic.
Do not examine distance as a means
to ink-choke into the night.
Dying shakes you from the sea
of dreams, because this is only a dream
on the morning commute.
You stole from the world, he said,
and it wasn’t a lie, but maybe not a whole
truth. It’s different, this reimagining.
Those memories weren’t yours to keep.
But darkness is the lake in the dream
where we die, the car at the bottom of the
water where we swam as children,
but we didn’t matter then
because we were so small.
Header photograph © Rachel Tennant.
Kayla King is a graduate of the Mountainview MFA. She is the author of These Are the Women We Write About, a micro-collection of poetry published by The Poetry Annals. Kayla’s fiction and poetry has been published by or is forthcoming from Plath Poetry Project, Dear Damsels, Figroot Press, Ink In Thirds Magazine, Firewords Magazine, Sobotka Literary Magazine, and Twelve Winters Press, among others. You can follow Kayla’s writing journey over at her website: kaylakingbooks.com or her twitterings @KaylaMKing.
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