Sludge
Daddy is dead.
Crying will not bring him back;
he can’t sense your grieving, little girl.
He loves it when you lie to him
He left and he’s gone
and it should be that simple,
but it’s hard to mourn
when we are living in his home.
We didn’t ask daddy to build a house
with his arms,
his hands, bleeding walls of
belabored pain.
He chose this battle
then left it for us;
Everyday we wrap our eyes
around his shape — the door.
You cry and I cry
but he never, ever cried
because all he lost in the process
was a body
so we grow;
in his wreckage, his sludge, his decay
and a new home takes hold in mottled skin
and we rise to the sun,
we find the outside
and shed our shadows, our brackish grey,
him.
Daddy’s gone,
but we are fine.
Baby Hippie
They call me the candy girl in my head
as I prance around my free range playpen/
I do not know redundancy
and line the flowers on my crown
with every word synonymous with eclectic.
I dance to the strums of an indigenous drum
and move in time to a synthetic gaga beat.
I let my body become soft and sweet like the dirt
until I am fantasy of nuts and fruit and chocolate
even if I’m not old enough to understand what I’m doing.
I am helpless but I am artistic,
and somehow, a personified aesthetic.
Through barefooted, cracked movements,
I somehow align and make sense.
Swaddled in the breasts of bohemia,
I suck a lollipop and spread my geometric wings.
They still say I’m a sugar bomb
full of pollution and ecstasy.
Understand, dear mother:
I must grow to be one with the Earth.
Spare Change?
There are two quarters in my pocket
and a slum hole in my chest
leading to a bloody
metal vendor.
I don’t have enough for a soda
and the machine is asking if I’m vegan
and all I’m too broke to give
just one goddamned answer.
Because I guess I’m becoming a stellar project
in my own lil’ void
with the assumption that this destruction
was my own undoing.
I am left with white knuckles
and an unanswered breath.
So rude.
All I wanted back
was my head.
Anastasia Jill (they/them) is a queer writer living in Central Florida. They have been nominated for Best American Short Stories, The Pushcart Prize, and several other honors. Their work has been featured or is upcoming with Poets.org, Sundog Lit, Flash Fiction Online, Contemporary Verse 2, Broken Pencil, and more.
