I want a Happy Meal™️ more than I want to die
or want to begin this cycle older than Pangea
I harken to dubious placenta, again, again, promise
of rebirth has always been a marketing tool,
The winds are still like after a storm, trees
bend as I bend with them, the road sinews,
veinous blood is not actually blue, you know,
oxygen always gets in the way of everything.
Cafeteria disinfectant is the sweetest drink I’ll
ever get fucked up on, chapped palms held
up to the Sun as it sets West. It often sets West when I am released,
the Sun foolishly believing in an age of tomorrow
Small chicken nuggets made of plastic and entrails are no different from
the way I always nodded my head when doctors asked me questions,
yes, no, I don’t know if the continents always had their own identity,
even before dire straits. Even before the wars, the advent of agriculture,
the mills that roll grain in and out of place, the pilgrimages that
never amounted to anything
My roommate’s crude drawing of a hang man
left on my foot with black kohl shines a smudged
Defiance, but smells no different to the line of cattle
in the drive through, smoked of carbon and waiting for something.
Between the hospital and the home, I
fiddle with time, stop to smoke on the side of the highway,
And promise to a God I don’t believe in, this is my last
Happy Meal for a while.
Gabby Vachon is a writer and HMUA from Montreal, Canada. She has been recently published in Blue Earth Review, Cosmonauts Avenue, and carte blanche, and was a finalist for the Smartish Pace Beullah Rose Poetry Prize. She holds an Honors English Literature B.A. from Concordia University, and lives with her beloved husband Justin and puppy Lola. @gabbyvwrites on Twitter.