For Better or Worse, This is the Last Time We Ever Speak by SK Osborn

I am a boring person now.

I stopped kissing strangers & drinking Popov.

I stopped making a certain kind of mistake & filled its space

with so many others. I smoke more now than I used to back then.

Back when you thought I had a problem but really I was a virginal saint.

Back when I thought I was unhappy in the world but it was really

just the home I had tried to make for myself here.

I am afraid of my father, ghosts, and a few other things.

This much has remained the same.

I still carry the same suitcases from my childhood home.

I still carry the same shapes of my old shame.

The pink box of my old baby teeth & other things I’ve outgrown—

The space between your fingers. The dress that makes me

beautiful. The dress that makes me sick. The wound my mother left

even though she wanted to be gentle.

There is forgiveness & then there is coming home

& then there is me on the interstate with my sour breath & dirty nails.

The split lip of my own old home is a bruise I keep pressing

because I have nothing better to do with my hands.

I wouldn’t come back & you wouldn’t take me.

In a perfect world, the story ends here.

Look at me now, if you must. Take a final, starving picture

to store in your stomach like the pit of a spoiled fruit.

Laugh to yourself. Snarl. Spit.

Lament my morbid & thrilling undoing.

Carry my ghost or bury it. I would never know the difference.