Angelina Nguyen, Del Norte High School, graduating in 25'
April 19, 2023

FOOD
 

Apples

Her single meal.

Impregnated

from consuming her insecurities

forcing down raw fistfuls of

marinated perceptions

to nurture a baby born of

self loathing.

Eat eat eat

Eat up society’s mangled standards

then cough up its corpse

until she is one herself

barely flesh and gnarled bones.

 

WATER

 

She is drowning in her expectations

and she doesn’t know how to swim

her emaciated limbs can’t       fight the capricious currents

of people        of eyes       of a “bare-minimum”

              defy it       but be weary

       she’s getting swept away and               her thoughts they’re drifting       off

cradled by smoke       a mirror is a sea and it is vast and unfathomable

             and she stares at the sea often              but all she sees is the shore

     where black oil spills        at her toes and it          sinks into the sand

   stains it with the raw memory of        pollution       pollution       pollution.

                                          She is disgusted with the sea.

 

SHELTER

 

Her perfect world is in her mother’s arms

an embrace that is whole where she rests

in a crescent nook that is textbook “complete”

where eyes could be a home

because her mother’s gaze was gilded and

liquid fire sculpted into agates that

did not know the memory of anything

but unconditional love.

 

Now she knows booze and crude glass fragments

The flat and dense plane of a father’s palm

And she hears his spastic shouts tearing through

Hallways asunder and ricocheting off ceilings

Reaching her and suddenly she’s an infant

And she’s crying for her mother

 

SHE’S GONE

SHE WON'T COME BACK

 

She knows but tears burn the corners of her eyes

And her face is enkindled with embers of

house fires and clandestine memories 

but she had hidden those recollections far away

Albums of play-by-play snapshots which

are vintage and impossibly evading corrosion

And it is because she can’t forget

Why can’t she

Why can’t she forget it

The poetry of her mother’s face

Engulfed in flames.

 

THE NECESSITIES OF LIFE

 

Food.

Water. 

Shelter.

She.

Had.

All.

Three.

So.

Why.

Isn’t.

She.

Alive?