How Deep Inside a Gun Are You

Christina Strigas

 

It is mostly the way you come at me

from afar—

treat me so differently up close

pretend that the clothes I’m wearing

are irrelevant;

I was as poor as you

 

as rich in feeling like you

as lost in spirit as you.

I guessed you played with life

as players do.

Manipulations are over

mind games are dead

mothers are older

children are taking over

that love you are holding onto

is growing weeds—

 

you think that seconds mean worlds

that cutting up my sanity

is a game.

Perhaps you drowned once

I never did

I keep floating

existing in this joke.

 

Open your mouth 

speak, don’t fire. 

 

 

***

Christina Strigas’s work has appeared in Montreal Writes, Feminine Collective, Neon Mariposa Magazine, Pink Plastic House Journal, BlazeVOX, Thimble Lit Magazine, Twist in Time Literary Magazine, The Temz Review, and Coffin Bell Journal. She teaches ESL to adults at McGill University, and French at a public elementary school for The Sir Wilfred Laurier School Board. She lives in Montreal, with her husband and two children. She writes novels for The Wild Rose Press.