Sarah Thursday: Three Poems

Sarah Thursday calls Long Beach, California, her home, where she advocates for local poets and poetry events. She runs a Long Beach-focused poetry website called CadenceCollective.net, co-hosts a monthly reading with one of her poetry heroes, G. Murray Thomas, and just started Sadie Girl Press as a way to help publish local and emerging poets. Her first full-length poetry collection, All the Tiny Anchors, is available now. Find and follow her on SarahThursday.com, Facebook, or Twitter.
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How to Unexist

Go from friend to flirt to lover. Do it fast and without remorse. Stay lover for days or weeks until you become mistress. Be a good mistress until you become secret. Stay secret until you lose the key to his car. Then become lie, not a lie you’ve told but be a lie. Stay lie until your fingers break and you can no longer touch. Then become weight around a neck. One to be carried as heavy as regret. Stay weight until you become formality. Then, become cordial. Become a multiple choice response of hello, how are you, I’m fine, you’re fine, we’re fine, everyone is fine until your fineness becomes echo. Stay echo while you begin to scrape your insides out. Pull out blood vessels. Pull out gut, fat, and muscle. Pull out bone. Lick it clean. Save your heart for last. Let it feel every ounce emptying. Then become translucent. Become as clear as ice so when he looks at you he sees nothing. Hears nothing. Feels nothing. Stay clear until you become forget. Become forget until all previous days dissolve. Stay forget until it never was. Until you are not even ghost. You are just not. Just no.

***

How to Go Backwards

Remove hands. Remove tongue.
Remove legs. Leave heart. Leave
eyes. Leave voice. Remove say.
Leave said. Remove fuck. Remove
kiss and dark car. Leave ache and
story. Remove naked. Leave cold.
Remove knowing. Leave knowing.
Remove lover and want. Leave honest
and cordial. Remove betray. Remove
conflict. Remove hold. Leave
accept. Remove complicated.
Remove layers. Remove open.
Leave close. Leave alone. Leave
alone. Leave alone.
***

If you ask me what I want

I want you unraveled
I want you edge-frayed
I want you seam-busted
threads dragging
I want you broken glass
and rusted gears
tornado torn
tsunami choking
I want you black-eyed
swollen lipped
nose bloodied
I want you raw
I want you singed
I want you fat pulled
off the bone
I want you diary-read
secrets on billboards
I want you spit out
I want you dried-up
dead flowers hanging
I want you burnt forest
and dry savannah
I want you limb-splayed
arms tied
and hands nailed
I want you teeth cracked
you feet-blistered
and back broken
I want you heart dead
voice cracked
lost-souled
I want you motherless
and child lost
I want you loveless
and ugly
I want you cheap
and fucked

What are you looking for?