by Mars Core

I could recite a dozen memories

where someone has wronged me.

A friend, a best friend, a father, a mother.

But I couldn’t recite a dozen where I hit back,

said, I hate you, and, I hope you suffer.

 

I kept all those things inside until they rusted,

fell apart, and then I breathed out

little spore clouds of oxidized iron.

 

I was a parked car in a junkyard with a T-bone side.

My flank steak was tenderized raw.

I told myself I was the problem, that I was hateful.

But I’ve never bruised anybody.

Nobody’s ever been scared by the push

of my lungs, the intake of air, or

what I expelled from my guts.

 

Every time I see my therapist, I fill out surveys:

ADHD, Anxiety, Alcohol, Have You Tried to Harm Yourself?

And it only occurs to me now, that they probably don’t

give out C-PTSD questionnaires to just anybody.

 

I feel the cracked taillight, the trunk knocked out of center,

the brown slashes where the paint was gripped to bruising.

And I take out a can of oil, squeeze it over dry and aching parts;

pump air back into wheezing tires, coach the

ventilation through 4-7-8 breathing.

 

I’m going to drive out of this field, this town.

Blaze down the main road with metal screaming

from the stereo and me howling with it.

Let the engine snarl when someone with a rock

stands on the sidewalk, and shove my head out the window:

I fucking love myself, and, I wish you nothing but tornadoes.

 

 

---

     Mars Core is an English major at OSU studying Creative Writing. They plan to remain at OSU and pursue an MFA in Poetry. Their first love is illustration, and their work explores self-reconciliation and otherness, often through connection to the sea, marine wildlife, and speculative fictions. They live in Jenks, Oklahoma, and spend their time not writing adding new sharks to their collection of trinkets.