Out to play, out to lunch

Anastasia Jill

Catch me in a paper cup,
drink me awkwardly, a boxed wine
until you miss me a little bit less;
mourning is a team sport, I suppose.

Eat me like cake at a party
in a hotel downtown, feet planted firmly
on the same concrete from which I jumped;
You have no idea what you’re doing, do you?

Sing me like karaoke at the same bar
that serves a glass full of sea,
salt is bloating, but then, so is grief.
you’re still missing me but tell people
“I loved her so much”
The same way you’d tell people
“She’s always just out to lunch”

when I would sit in white rooms
talking to myself in a tinfoil hat,
watching the starlight in a bulb
That weren’t really starlights,
just a bulb in a bedroom.
I’d watch that bulb bloom,
Staying out to lunch so long,
I’d learn to play with big boys
who lived in their little ruin.
Everyone knows it, but
you’ll never tell tell them
the real way I died.

Anastasia Jill is a queer writer living in the South. Her work has been nominated for Best of the Net and Best Small Fiction Anthology and has been featured with Poets.org, Lunch Ticket, FIVE:2:ONE, apt, Anomaly Literary Journal, 2River, Gertrude Press, Minola Review, and more.

© Variant Literature Inc 2021