POETRY
By Yael Valencia Aldana
Alien, you are the best person I have met/not the strongest but the best/The worst thing you ever did I made you do/Drunk off our asses atop a ten-story apartment roof in Brooklyn/ I command you to climb down the fire escape/ steal a tiny barbeque grill/ I see below/Game/ you climb down/you call up/ I can’t make it up with the grill/ Do it I slur/Don’t come up here without that fucking grill/ I, confident in your athleticism/ You return with the grill/ Our triumph, our token, our coup.
You could have died ten stories up/ Jumping between fire escape and the roof ladder/
you survived my drunken bullying/ Maybe I’m the worst person I ever met.
We take the tiny grill home / Is it really ours?/ We never use it/ We giggle over it
Our triumph, our token, our coup.
You are the best person I ever met/ Not the strongest but the best/ I might be the worst person you have met/ Am I your most dangerous Ex?/ Would you be in danger if I reappeared?
If I thought we could make it/ I would take you back. /Would you let me?/ I would storm into your new relationship/ leave your girlfriend in shambles/ Fuck the feminist sisterhood. / I would sent her back to her mother crying /Back to her best friend crying. /Feminism means you need to be strong,/ So take it and I’ll take him.
I have been that bitch and I would have been that bitch again/ I would have taken the karma and I would have taken you/ But we wouldn’t have made it/ So I let you alone.
Photo by Romain Briaux
This story originally appeared in Stonecoast Review Issue 19. Support local booksellers and independent publishers by ordering a print copy of the magazine.