YOUNG ADULT Poem: I Can’t Make You Him (Let’s say we met when I was seventeen. Would that change us?), by Sophia Csulak

I was hunting for sport tonight, my lips pulled
Back to bare my smile
Slim
Slick
Sultry
You could call me by my name but I’d prefer you
Don’t

Easy enough was the first boy I found at the mercy of my perfume
Charming was I? Telling you spells and mumbling the fables
Smoke and mirrors, trick tricks
Mindless manic my move ment
Had I caught a disease I’d have infected you
Senselessly

Against that brick wall, I shoved
Maiming your body; desires of blood that ebbed beneath
Mine for the slaughterhouse

Pinched my eyes shut when I felt you bend
Coiling around your bursting limbs!

Then you had ME

You felt like–him
Submission to his memory
Created his body with your thrown out parts
You don’t charm like him or engulf like him
But I’ll feed on you as if you were

I set off my own traps with my own burden

Weak frail hands
Falling into the pit of snakes and swallowing
The poison I was pushing into you
In love, with the body I made to be his

Then You FUCKING Spoke!

Ashes of my creation fell on my shoes
Melting off my charred flesh, burnt by my Dante
Nine? Be mine! I’m whining now, circles parlay!

Lost in your weak lasso as you drag me back
No use fighting with my bonfire
Your mark rests on my jugular for the following week
Stalking the plum tooth soaked maul, meek

Preyed on, I am
Pray have I, you’re him