16-Year-Old Buys Lighter Fluid with Her Birthday Money
mama i’m looking for some kerosene
there’s a heat
coiled in my belly
like an animal
feels like
personhood writhing
the kind that says
FEED ME FEED ME
it’s immense and barbed and puncturing me from the inside out
consuming
too slow though
i’m looking to become glowworm
lustrous
i wanna scrape this fire out of my stomach
and smear it all over my skin
wet my palms with it
bathe myself in my own power
no longer vessel
i wanna be a walking explosion
but maybe this heat’s alive
maybe it’s gotta be coaxed
wave some jasmine under my nose
lure the womanhood up my throat
out of hiding
let it tumble out my mouth
turn me orange apollo woman
humming with electricity
ready to chew up anything and spit it out fresh
Thea Rowe is a developing writer and poet from Michigan. She has been involved with the literary arts community in Ann Arbor, Michigan since 2016. She participated in the Brave New Voices international poetry slam in 2017 with the Ann Arbor poetry slam team. Her work is to explore honestly: the self and womanhood in the twenty-first century.
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