What Type of Person Are You?

I’m awake by a jerk and

very confused

desperate for food and

to fill this weakness I have felt since

just eight

the faintness that follows

my journeys,

conversations,

forever marked by a stamp that is

covered but always visible

attached to signs

impossible to ignore

Big Bulky signs that map out

my country strangers—

an invite, to them,

a promise of a box

a promise of certainty

a promise of explication.

What on earth is attached to you?

they’ll ask,

those prying beaks the adhesive

holding motors to my skin.

Get well,

look after yourself,

I am sure you cannot,

you silly girl—you don’t know the extent of

your own condition!

Of course,

they know better than I of that ravenous hunger

in the early hours

of the fear of your body pulling you

straight through the floor in

a panicked desperation just to hold up your muscles

and that fear

I feel in labyrinthine streets

no solution if the problem, I,

were to burden you

now

after all, how can I trust you

when my body never trusted itself?

Words by Tatum Smith-Sperling, she/her