To The Girl After Me

After he splits my head in half

with his

 

         where have you beens

& where are you going dressed like thats

         & i need to feel respecteds,

 

I bleed. Lie around on various floors of my

apartment, feel sorry for myself & my

open maw of a cranium. Then I sew

 

it back up. My mother never taught me,

so I learn from a book: Sewing Skulls

For Dummies. It’s not a half-bad job,

 

& my new wig covers it perfectly well.

Then I stumble over his Instagram profile

just like dashing my foot against a stone

 

& the stitches begin to weaken, loosen. 

He’s grinning so big it looks like he

might swallow the whole earth. I pull

 

the last trailing stitch out, bring the stapler

down on my skull instead. Much faster. Oh,

but then—I catch a whiff of Daisy and I know

 

you’re close. He always loved that perfume.

Next girl, I fear that you may have become

something of a meteoroid, hurling yourself

 

around the inescapable gravity of his star. 

Got to be fun. Until you get motion sickness.

My head must be festering, swollen with disease,

 

because my staples are popping out at sickening

speed; one nearly takes out a lady’s eye. Nothing for

it—hands clasped to my head, I stagger to the “Arts”

 

& “Crafts” store, pay one-handed. I catch sight

of your smug & elusive profile. You’re texting

him about all the sexy “crafts” in your basket.

 

But in the end, we both know this: you’re in his DMs.

I’m holding the two halves of my skull together

with kindergarten glue. We are exactly the same.

Amy DeBellis is the author of the novels All Our Tomorrows, Methuselah, and The Widening Gyre.