So Rotten, So Ripe
Sara Sturek (New York University, USA)
D won’t stop sliding into my DMs, swiping up
on my stories, hearting selfies where I know
I look sexy & I wonder if you’re ever gonna let me
go, if I’m ever gonna let you go, if I’ll ever learn
to let go, period. Hahaha. The last time
we saw each other, we got coffee for five
hours, you called me dude, a record-breaking
number of times, picked apart my birth chart (like
such a Capricorn) & called me a cigarette:
That’s it, you’re a cigarette! You embody a cigarette,
as if stumbling upon an epiphany, a puzzle piece
lost under the couch, now found. It’s clear you’ve been trying
to figure me out–good luck. I’ve been called worse & I can tell
who wouldn’t last a day in New York. I can also read between the lines,
half the time, I don’t need the lines, we never did. We’re unspoken,
another way to say absolutely nothing, unforgiving,
liminal, so fucking L.A., you’re in the film business
for Christ’s sake who likes Springs Breakers equally as anything
directed by Tarkovsky or microdosing in Joshua Tree
where your body slackens over a boulder, sweaty
from an Airbnb with no AC, heaving over heat lightning
dancing across the sky. You’re entranced & see, baby, that’s me–
what strikes, what leaves, what performs, what you can’t
admit–I’m yours. A misshapen Manic Pixie Dream Girl for years, the city-heat
you never escape in the desert, between the morning sheets
of hollow hook-ups & the screenshots of my poetry hidden
on your phone. Still, I’m asking how do you close a door
with no door frame? We continue to orbit each other & maybe we’re even
or insane as ever cause I’ve tried to forget you
& you’ve tried to memorialize me, fuel for your narrative arc
on & off screen. Now, we’ve never dated, gone for dinner
or drinks but you keep a polaroid of me in your glove compartment
& I tell you off in a poem every chance I get
Sara Sturek is a Goldwater Writing Workshop Fellow at NYU where she is pursuing an MFA in Poetry. You can find her on www.sarasturek.com
