[151 words]
Most newborn animals can already stand.
I’m 28 and still wobbly.
Golden braids dangling from ivory towered
odds stacked
against me.
Life is easier once you accept it’s not fair.
James Baldwin said that nothing is so unbearable once you have it as freedom.
Maya Angelou said, “I know why the caged bird sings.”
Is that why I trap myself?
I’m an embarrassment of riches.
Hoarding,
whoring,
trap dooring.
There’s no such thing as enough money.
It deadens me,
dead ends me.
Would you climb me up
or push me down?
Like Ana Mendieta,
face pressed against glass pane.
Earth body doomed,
bloomed,
blossoming.
I think about this every time I lean out my window
to invite up a new lover.
Dizzying myself at the height, sights
of rocks below.
Halo of birds surround my head.
Like a Looney Tune, like a Disney princess.
Cockroaches singing,
stringing
my noose of pearls.
Molly Rose Strugatz is a writer, artist, and teacher from Brooklyn, living in Barcelona. A graduate of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, her work explores community, nature, and folklore. Her writing has appeared in Folly Journal, Parabola, Tummy Ache, Outhouse Magazine, Virgo Venus Press, and elsewhere.
