substack
(p.s. drag me!!!!!)
A Letter to the Queen
it’s
almost as if she’s replaced me—
plucked me out of place and put in
something more cheery, a body
with cleaner lines, a person
with an ineptitude for calculating
or foreseeing malice. In this way,
I’ve been replaced by a baby, by someone
so clean and so thoroughly good-hearted,
good of heart, someone only capable
of seeing good. When I sat down
to chat with her on my dad’s balcony I said:
if you take someone, you take them
for the good and the bad. You can’t choose.
You can’t just find a little bit of sky, and claim
it’s synecdoche for the world. It is always
raining somewhere. But then,
it began to rain there and everywhere,
and everywhere became doused
in the lies I was spewing. What
is true is that I have been usurped,
and this foreign, smile-stained
chick is the new me. And everything
good and proper reigns in her universe.
In this universe, I am dust, zilch,
washed away in the downpour
of the royal welcoming of the nineteen
year old queen. In this universe,
I huddle in the corner while townspeople
offer ornate weaved baskets and small, ripe
peaches as tribute, the sun casting
a scorching glow over everything,
forcing shininess. In this universe,
I am not a daughter, or a sister, or
a woman with a body. It’s some kind
of feudal society with kings and queens
and magistrates in which she rules
ignorantly with a glean of happy, her face
twisted in perpetual joy—oh to live
in the kingdom of good—while I
am doing jigs on the street for coins,
pretending and hoping to recast myself
as the person I once was.
plucked me out of place and put in
something more cheery, a body
with cleaner lines, a person
with an ineptitude for calculating
or foreseeing malice. In this way,
I’ve been replaced by a baby, by someone
so clean and so thoroughly good-hearted,
good of heart, someone only capable
of seeing good. When I sat down
to chat with her on my dad’s balcony I said:
if you take someone, you take them
for the good and the bad. You can’t choose.
You can’t just find a little bit of sky, and claim
it’s synecdoche for the world. It is always
raining somewhere. But then,
it began to rain there and everywhere,
and everywhere became doused
in the lies I was spewing. What
is true is that I have been usurped,
and this foreign, smile-stained
chick is the new me. And everything
good and proper reigns in her universe.
In this universe, I am dust, zilch,
washed away in the downpour
of the royal welcoming of the nineteen
year old queen. In this universe,
I huddle in the corner while townspeople
offer ornate weaved baskets and small, ripe
peaches as tribute, the sun casting
a scorching glow over everything,
forcing shininess. In this universe,
I am not a daughter, or a sister, or
a woman with a body. It’s some kind
of feudal society with kings and queens
and magistrates in which she rules
ignorantly with a glean of happy, her face
twisted in perpetual joy—oh to live
in the kingdom of good—while I
am doing jigs on the street for coins,
pretending and hoping to recast myself
as the person I once was.