by Jovi Aviles, 16
Spanish roots, meaning “of the,”
I’ll show you what it means to be
a woman of means.
Scraping the bloodied inside of my cheeks raw.
Wanting to pet every monster that erupts from the cracked leather of your jeans
flipping through the mangled pages of a misfit magazine that slices through my flaky skin
pale and raw like the sweetly sugared dough we slide through broken dishes and wooden cutlery.
We walk on water, slabbed into wooden planks and creaked across stages lit up like the casper silhouettes
that we fold into.
The flaps of our ears made to bend to the succumbing numbness from the teeth-scrape shouts
of the virulent males that seep and glare through our bodies made of glass
clear and distorted, as are their minds made up from molten, melted perceptions
of girls twice seen,
and once removed.
Aberdeen, New Jersey
Bridge Ink 