Marine Biology

If we were entirely made by thread, I’d be the red yarn.
There is something about rods and cones
that doesn’t seem to like danger. They work like facets on diamonds,
sample lipstick at the grocery, white letters on stop signs;
like the word “caramel” when I say it.
God, I just want to be important. I just want to be someone real.
The early autumn leaves have me thinking deep crimson hue is only okay
when it’s fifty miles early and I should’ve expected it. People don’t like that color:
it’s like being hit in the face with a shit-ton of bricks, and nobody wants
to be met with something real.
What’s the fun in being real when you have to prove it? Let’s see,
I have a dog. When I was four I stepped on a nail and had it taken out with tweezers;
when I was seventeen I glued cigarettes into scrapbooks. When I was old enough
to call bullshit on Andy Warhol, I made a choker out of tabs off Campbell’s chicken noodle soup and a severed G string from my guitar. Sometimes,
I sit in bed and wonder how to shed eyelashes
and the effects of antidepressants on women taking birth control.
World history probably warned me about this:
being a bitch is like manhandling a group project,
everyone drowns you in praise ‘til you fuck up. I’m waiting for you to smoke it off.
I’m waiting for you to stare at the sea ‘til you’re positive there’s something there.
Under all these deeply damaged layers of artificial material and cheaply-crafted plastic,
there’s something there, and I can’t believe it’d take a bachelor’s degree to see it.