after Nicole Homer
i name myself
rotting milk
father’s daughter
clamshell, cracked against sand rock
soap scum stuck in your hair after the lather rinses off
son, or something like it
teeth littered in grass, planted in soft earth
sprout of my mother’s stomach
the potato you forgot at the back of the pantry until it started to grow again
anything that isn’t a word someone else tried to make me hold
i keep cutting my lip open
as each new word finds a different way
to slice at my gums
eventually, every noise
just smells like iron
i wonder how many words i can fit
in my stomach before my belt breaks open
& the buttons go flying everywhere
you know the monty python sketch
where the man orders the left side of the menu
& the right side of the menu
& bursts only after eating a single mint
(it’s only wafer thin)
sometimes i feel like that
& i can’t tell when the meal is ending
& i am getting to the mint
sometimes i say my own name
or some version of it
or a new thing i have just created
& it feels like splitting myself in half
i mean,
this is truly an exhausting thing
every morning i place a wafer under my tongue
prepared to swallow
at the first sign of trouble,
let it dissolve thin & sickly sweet
there are so many versions of me
sitting in so many people’s throats
that now i am limescale
coating every pipe after the hard
water evaporates
there is actually very little difference
between who i was
& who i’ve called myself into
only less teeth now
Lip Manegio is the author of We’ve All Seen Helena & is just happy to be here.