CROOKED

​JASMINE LEDESMA

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It is July so everything burns.
I’m on a beautiful subway.
The air is salted with evening sleaze.
Haven’t eaten in three pinky promises
so I’m shaking awfully but thinking
in arpeggio!
Ask me anything about myself, I’ll tell you. Really. 
I spent the day bouncing down sizzling avenues 
with a friend who kept asking me to stop screaming. 
My favorite color is fainting.
A man standing nearby tells me he loves me in 
morse code, his finger absently tapping his leg.
My hair is freckle brown, burning down my back. 
Drunk off my own sloshing cells,
orphaned by safe opportunity.
The train slithers and heaves like a bad cough.
I miss my stop by ten degrees.
You should have seen it.