The little things, like cavities

Just take a minute to be grateful

if this morning

you didn’t need glass

or silicon hydrogel polymers

to see your face unblurred in the mirror.

Cosmos and cesium,

nebulae and nitric acid—

yes,

they will kill you,

and yes,

you have no say,

and yes,

yes,

yes, you are an open wound

suffocating under the heel of the

overlarge capitalist mosquito

who sucks and sucks and sucks and

never bleeds you dry but leaves

that itch—

and yes,

that is your fate if

you believe in fate,

and that is your destiny

if you believe in destiny,

but also: fuck destiny.

Feel gratitude

that the same cortisol that runs through

your veins poisoning you with epigenetic trauma

also allows you to

eat leftover cake for breakfast

without worrying about cavities.

Or brush well and eat the cake, anyway.

Time to say, “Fuck you,”

and do exactly as you please.

Champagne and whiskey on your roof

I forgot how you sometimes trespass my amygdala

when my defenses are down,

so my mind is overwhelmed and then

there’s an aftertaste of too much iced coffee

and I feel a seeking gaze from

those blue eyes that refuse to judge

and the warmth of the halo of sunshine that I swear followed you

and I’m squinting now because for a moment 2am is too bright—

then the silk sheets against my skin turn to flannel

as you maintain the careful distance

I still sometimes need,

fingers strumming something soft on your beat-up guitar

and goddammit.

I can hear the laughter in your breath

as I drag my bare feet across your floor.

We’re drinking champagne and whiskey

(on your roof,

in the dark)

while studying sparrows and lonely one way streets.

Your arm is around my shoulders and we’re never

really certain what we are.

But I like the way you smell

and you smile for real when I get excited

and we know how to coexist in this world.

I love you, I tell you.

I love you, you respond.

(Neither of us are very good at this.)

We’re chasing toads and skipping stones,

you: all blue eyes and sunshine,

opining on the Juno spacecraft;

me: wanting so badly to trust

those words of yours that I’d breathe in,

the words you’d press against my mouth

so there was no chance they might get lost.

And now insomniac nights have started blending together

and exhaustion is making me question all my choices

and I find I’m torturing myself with that photo

(you know the one)

and oh shit.

There it is.

Suddenly, I can see it.

The expression that everyone else promised me

said everything I didn’t yet know how to trust.

Now.

As if that’s a help to anyone.

Because of course it’s only looking back that I realize:

it was real for you, too.

Now I know the look in your eyes wasn’t

just something I’d convinced myself I wished for too hard.

Somehow with ink on wrinkled paper

and memories half-faded to sepia—

now it’s clear.

You really fucking loved me.

Goddammit.

I don’t know if I halfway wanted love to hurt

or I was resigned to it as gospel,

but you would treat my scars with a gentleness

too new,

too strange—

I didn’t recognize it without the collateral damage.

God.

I wish I had met you later—

less raw, less skittish.

Less bruised.

I wish I had been brave enough to believe you.

I wish you had been brave enough to ask me to stay.

I wish I had fallen asleep hours ago.

For just a moment,

I can almost persuade myself that

these silk sheets are flannel.

STAY BACK. DANGER AHEAD.

It’s a modern kind of self destructive

and it’s hidden from all the smoke detectors

and carbon monoxide alarms.

But it’s the same flippant lines, and it’s the same bitter smile,

and it’s the same cocktails in my veins

that wind me up like clockwork and three piece suits.

I’m not a spark, a match, a tinderbox,

because then the smoke could reckon a warning:

STAY BACK.

DANGER AHEAD.

One of those new electric lighters, maybe,

that hisses alive, high voltage heat instead of conflagration

but can do all the same damage with

just

that

click.

And though I can burn and burn

like someone thoroughly

disposing of the evidence at a crime scene,

I still may tire of this godly pedestal.

I still may tire of holding myself up alone.

I still do tire of resilience.

Yet as I’ve crept closer to ghost,

a shade of the girl I used to be—

of the girl I had to be—

of the girl I always believed I had to be—

I find, surprisingly,

I still (somehow) want to do so much more than

simply persevere and endure in this world.

And perhaps.

Perhaps I might one day allow myself

to forgive the girl whose only crime

was being born;

just born with faulty neurochemical transmitters

and epigenetic trauma

and a heart altogether too forgiving and trusting

for the ruinous world we live in.

Perhaps I can forgive that girl her survival.

Perhaps I can embrace that girl her stubbornness.

Perhaps I can accept that girl

all her faults and flaws and fears and—

(Perhaps)

And then—

ABOUT:

After the incredibly practical literature degree from the University of Chicago, Maia Brown-Jackson braved the myriad esoteric jobs that follow, until straying to Iraq to volunteer with survivors of ISIS genocide. Inspired with new focus, she caffeinated herself through a graduate degree in terrorism and human rights and now investigates fraud, waste, and abuse of humanitarian aid in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. Also, she writes. Follow on Instagram @tilting.at.windmills and check out her book And My Blood Sang. Visit https://www.maiabrown-jacksonwriting.com/ for updates.

EDITOR'S SONG PAIRING: Eat More Cake — All I Ever Wanted (feat. River)