like coptic by Falon Willow
i’ll take the numb fingers
but cut loose the details
anatomy in so many hours
i’ll never have back
don’t pretend you've never asked for a simpler day
with nights as the last leaf in November
building forests of concrete with no definition for lonely
my bed the only thing immortal
how can you blame me?
for letting the eyes the path the texture
of the world go extinct the way their bodies beg
a language no one left cares to repeat
you can only live in a mouth
absent of memories for so long
before the slightest smell brings on sick
so there you are an abstraction of yourself
blue & pulseless
yelling dead names to your own parts)
i'm desperate for my baby teeth
my first locks of hair
the knowledge of a small body
pawned to everyone but me
the only things who could
move my tongue
i’ll take every basement and frontal lobe
that's tended them these years
hostage until they cough me up
hold the pieces beneath my pillow
until they’re gone
the way the best words go
moths whispering to dust
but cut loose the details
anatomy in so many hours
i’ll never have back
don’t pretend you've never asked for a simpler day
with nights as the last leaf in November
building forests of concrete with no definition for lonely
my bed the only thing immortal
how can you blame me?
for letting the eyes the path the texture
of the world go extinct the way their bodies beg
a language no one left cares to repeat
you can only live in a mouth
absent of memories for so long
before the slightest smell brings on sick
so there you are an abstraction of yourself
blue & pulseless
yelling dead names to your own parts)
i'm desperate for my baby teeth
my first locks of hair
the knowledge of a small body
pawned to everyone but me
the only things who could
move my tongue
i’ll take every basement and frontal lobe
that's tended them these years
hostage until they cough me up
hold the pieces beneath my pillow
until they’re gone
the way the best words go
moths whispering to dust
Falon Willow is a 19-year-old writer from New Hampshire. She's obsessed with girlhood and analyzing everything around her. She was the co-Teen Poet Laureate of New Hampshire from 2019-2020. Her work has been featured in several online journals and she self-published her first poetry collection Sweet Dreams & Violent Ends in 2021. She can be found on Instagram @falon.willow
