Exuviae

By Georgia Bowan

I’m going to starve myself sick,

You know I have a bounty on my head.

Gorged the forbidden fruit now and I’m naked,

Sloughed off my skin onto the pavement.

And I know its crude and eucharistic.

But this wine and food tastes like piss and shit.

I just don’t have a knack for it, baby,

I’m nothing like you and I hate it.

I’m sorry that I never touched you,

Not in the ways that I wanted to.

Pupils dilate, when I come home late,

Rigour mortis sets in and I vegetate.

I could have faked it, if I really wanted to.

Given all of the things that I put my parents through.

Like mapping dotted lines out on my torso,

Disfiguring the life that they gave birth to.