Raina Masters

Undress 

I stand in front of mirrors, stare at the

pieces I hate. There are no overstuffed

shirts to hide the pinched flesh around

my waist. The birthmarks dotted around

the alabaster skin are like cigarette burns

handed down through DNA. No one will

tell me to eat a cheeseburger now. I will

hear that I'm not pretty enough to be

harassed. People will whisper that my skirt 

is too tight, that my thighs aren't meant to

be exposed, that they are slabs of meat that

should hang in a slaughterhouse. I will only

undress in the dark corners of my house, 

where only a single light bulb can see every

flaw, where I can peel these mistakes off 

of my bones and burn the evidence.

This classroom is empty

Dates and the names of battles have never

held any nostalgia for me. These things have

always left me cold. We celebrate death like

we do our weddings and births, with cakes

and parades, with civic pride and a solemn

face. I have spent too many days mourning 

the wreckage of lost battles in the stark

silence of evening. I held onto anniversaries

of loss like a worn pair of shoes I'd grown too

attached to, to comfortable with. Now, it has

become a massive cleanse, a dumpster filled 

with everything I'd hated about myself when

your rough hands bruised my skin like fruit. 

I will not leave you flowers now. We are a clock 

stopped forever at 1:37am. I've always hated

driving in the cold in between of dusk and

daylight. You are a calendar bleached of

content. A yearbook of cautionary tales. 

Raina Masters is a poet from New Jersey who lives off of coffee and music. She is a professional daydreamer and gets lost in the piles of books in her house. She is also a fan of fall and winter, hot apple cider and quiet walks in the cold. You can find her in Chantarelle's Notebook, Work to a calm, Thick With Conviction and a few others.