What’s on My Mind

As a kid, I had lice like eight times in the span of three years.  It was ridiculous.

Each night was spent soaking my hair in chemicals and my father, with no sense of my pain, yanking the smallest comb you’ve ever seen in your life through my hair to pull out each speck of lice and egg, bit by bit.  It was absolute torture.

It was such a big part of my life for so long.  My things were thrown out again and again, yet somehow they kept coming back, passed among friends and passed back to me.  Half of what I owned was covered in plastic, taken off and put on again for three years, before we finally just left it on.  I was forced into isolation.

It seems stupid to talk about, but it became my entire life for quite a few years.  I began to sympathize with the lice, as I knew they were just trying to burrow into a new home…  How would you like it if your house poured chemicals on you every night?  Which is why I wrote a poem about it.

War is a frisky lover of mine,
Playful and naughty.
I hope my steady doesn’t see the scars,
But I know she will hear me scream
For my mistress amidst slumber,
Remembering how
My sweetest sprays her blood inside my mouth.
I don’t mind it too much;
In fact,
I vie for it,
Digging my hands into the human flesh,
Tearing it apart, bit by bit.
It looks so tantalizing
I just want a bite.
I can see the child I’m fighting for,
For the battle tears apart my own land.
Will he remember me tantalizing over human meat,
As it hangs in my hands?
I wonder,
For we haven’t known each other long.
He hesitantly reaches forward, but not for me.
I watch him dig into a piece of flesh.

War is not faithful to me.
She’s frivolous,
A wild spirit.
I watch as she softly kisses my enemy,
As the corrosive acid of her spit
And the enemy’s poison
Runs through my home.
War drags a lingering hand across my chest,
As she passes sultrily,
Riding the toxin like a wave.
Like a nervous fan,
Death stumbles after,
Corrosive and beastlike.

I watch as my mistress envelops my son in a tight hug,
As death scorches through his body,
Making its way past the dirt and grime,
Right to his golden heart.
I watch as parts of him,
Simply…. Fall right off.
Him, who is half of me,
As though they were just borrowed.
He looks like melted cheese,
Stretched between two hands.
I lose sight of him in the thick brush.

The enemy rears his ugly head once again,
Making the land rumble.
And in the midst of war,
I sprint forward in the chaos.
It feels as though I am falling,
Every step furthering me into an abyss;
A void in which I do not know what I am fighting for.
A comb runs through the scalp,
So thin that I cannot escape.
I am flung off.
Just a little speck of lice
On a big haired head.

Author: Zoe Conner

I'm Zoe Conner. I'm writing on a computer named Rambo, which you should only say with a rolled r. I write because I don't want to be just another cog in the machine. I live. I write. That's all you need to know. View all posts by Zoe Conner