Simone Person: Anti-Ode to Survival
Photo: Joanna C. Valente
Anti-Ode to Survival
Thrown down to the wolves, made feral for nothin’ – Jack White
There’s the forgetting—newfound blessing,
aren’t I glad to be so far away from my troubles?
Loosened them from around my neck.
I’m not supposed to say, but I still want
to die all the time. Everyone needs me to pretend
silver-skinned grief stopped crowding my tongue.
That I’m no longer a wretched mausoleum
of all the wrongs unearthed on this body.
Jackknifed in the throat of the world,
and I was still expected to be candied halo,
perfumed cloud. I was raised fist-tight and perpetually
ready. Forced to bludgeon my hysterical tenderness.
Learned early to turn my tongue dagger
and never sit with my back to any door.
I built the most beautiful defenses, but ran out
of enemies, so I ate up the days strangling my shadows.
I fell from luck and lost my nerve. Strained
to molt into the dead-ringer of a girl.
Did the opposite of what instinct taught me. Muzzled
every ghost that made home on my shoulders.
Burned myself down trying for the glow love swore it’d give.
My Rapist Throws Himself Upon Our Mercy to Explain
What’s blood if not for shedding? – Candyman
Look, I’ve been growing. I know I did my fair share.
Should’ve learned to be a better man. Never gotten so rough
with her, but she hurt me, too, and I have the hunger
to prove it. She can change the locks, but I’ll always find her open
windows. I don’t know why my love’s a stopped watch.
Can you blame me? I’ve only got what I was given.
My hands are like my father’s—so easy around a neck.
I just let myself get too accustomed to how good fever tastes.
Simone Person is a Black queer femme and two-time Pink Door Writing Retreat fellow. She is the author of Dislocate, the prose winner of the 2017 Honeysuckle Press Chapbook Contest, and Smoke Girl, the poetry winner of the 2018 Diode Editions Chapbook Contest. Simone grew up in small Michigan towns and Toledo, Ohio. She can be found at simoneperson.com.
