peachy clean / Layne McArdle

peachy clean

Layne McArdle

Content Notes: suicide attempt and sexual trauma

on my seventeenth: a ghost of me

is perched on the overpass.

this will be (over/pass) —

she is making ribbons of herself,

peachy tendrils peeling,

chiffonade in the air.

(now this is a girlhood. now this is

a thing you can comb your fingers

through, cradle a lack.)

a traumatic past-ripe disorder.

a pulpy mass, translated:

an underbelly in my throat.

i (dis/re)member seventeen: a peach.

she wants someone to swallow her

whole and choke on the stone.

she wants to make ribbons of the body

and dissolve in the wet aftermath, like sugar.

she wants to taste sweet.