Anastasia Jill
I stole her credit card to buy brushes made of unicorn tail.
They’re rainbow, like me, holographic in the light
and their bristles are the same pastel as my misery.
I can’t measure my depression in words,
but I can in powders and scents.
Prehnite comes in cycles,
in glittered dabs across my face and there is nobody
to tell me that it’s too much.
There are weird things crawling inside my bones,
composing my body, making me into a woman.
I am not crazy, but I can pretend that I was made of family,
and never of abstract concept.
I am nobody’s mother, not even my own,
but I am a child of conspiracy. I’m not an orphan.
Abandonment is too concrete to claim the girl
with the winking skin.
Something’s not right because I am not special.
I am a spirit too rare to be claimed.
***
Anastasia Jill is a queer poet and fiction writer living in the southern United States. She is a current editor for the Smaeralit Anthology. Her work has been published or is upcoming with Poets.org, Cleaver Magazine, FIVE:2:ONE, Ambit Magazine, Drunk Monkeys, Hawai’i Pacific Review, The Laurel Review: Fearsome Critters, and more.