HEY. SCREW YOU.

maybe i am a little too much,

too chatty, too weird, too unaccomplished.

i don’t feel like the right fit ever, do I?

do your toes hurt? or cause leg spasms?

make you cringe and blush scarlett?

i have considered all this and more

and let me tell you, i plan on refashioning.

not for you, not for the world.

but solely for my own glorious, inane self.

i like the chatty, i like the weird

the world has too much of the same anyway.

and so i’ll preserve those bits.

i’ll pickle them, brine them and lock them up

like ammammas do with mangoes in summer.

however, i’ll refashion my failures

and watch them slowly fade away

like water on a hot sauce pan.

i have plans: big, fat, juicy ones.

of reading literature, scrutinizing politics.

of watching patriarchy horridly crumble,

under my cackling, tea sipping gaze.

maybe i’ll write or study media

pimp myself on the altar of music and poetry.

and all this i do: one, for myself,

two for the world, three for goodness

and winding up, maybe, just maybe for you.