A Wish for Ignorance

recovery never matters your sickness is a death sentence in the eyes around you you lick from the hand that feeds and ask for more plumping yourself up to free them of their pain but they will always remember you for your worst slumped over in a desk chair lips permanently shut and etched into a frown they move to wrap their arms around you in the partial feign of love to remember how much the circle is shrinking feeling your heart beat from its jail of a ribcage they hand you off at the doctor’s office parallel to the babysitters of the past but when they retrieved you back then it was all smiles and kisses now it’s exasperated sighs and wrinkled foreheads never understanding how the number on the scale continues to be a mystery for the both of you you try to swallow the still-growing sadness with every 20mg blue little pill hiding the prescription in your bedroom drawers then fade into the kitchen cabinets making sure their eyes are on your plate

Lauren Foster (she/her)

My Father would open boxes with the jagged edge of his keys the tinny rattle of them on his keychain (one to our front door the other to grandpa’s house) the dull copper scent it would leave behind on his fingers that he would smell when he lifted a glass of ice water to his lips or wiped the sweat from his temples that old penny smell would make his nose wrinkle and remind him of the loose change jangling around in his pockets taking up space and weighing him down his whole life