The Wings Inside Our Stomachs

by Nicelle Davis

I'm not a monster, you say. The little girl in me agrees—
sits next to your boy-self on the curbside
of our childhoods. I once believed the hole in you would hide
the girth on me, but combined
we are one jagged edge placed next to another. All rip and twin—
ball of barbed-wire
passed between bloody fingers. We never meant harm—marriage
just was
n't our game—would have fared better at monsters-in-the-dark—
we're
well practiced at running from shadows. Your boy-self can leap
a chain-
link fence, with the weight of stolen guns in both pockets. My
girl-self can scale
selves—become a folded sheet to avoid a neighbor's "Doctor"
hands. Now, being found
feels like losing. Stop looking at me, and I'll stop looking
for you—omen. We're not yet tagged
into being what we've been winging so hard against.

Nicelle Davis lives in Southern California with her husband James and their son J.J. Her poems are forthcoming in The New York Quarterly, PANK, Superficial Flesh, and others. She'd like to acknowledge her poetry family at the University of California, Riverside and Antelope Valley Community College. She runs a free online poetry workshop at: http://nicelledavis.wordpress.com/.