Stagger

1/6/2023

By Mateo Perez Lara

I close my eyes and I imagine the pit. I imagined your lost mind, I imagined: the armaments supply cut off. I imagined screams; they rip through a California fantasy. I imagined a simple pleasure: I echo in halls of our lust. Tell me to hold your hand. I promise I won’t cry when it falls apart again. Your mind’s out, I ask why, when the asphalt-tinged paint drips down, rots our pretty color, how I wanted the pretty color, and did you remember how the floor creaked and was uneven, and could you remember how cold it was in the backseat of your car, did you light the cigarette or put it out on me? The sky is gray again and I’m waiting for my therapist to call back, the whole system is wretched and I’m retching in the bathroom, and you can’t believe me, I’m alone I’m alone I’m alone, but this smile has glinted golden, so you don’t believe me, I’m clawing at the wooden floor for someone to come and hold my hair and my hand, damn the truth this time. I just want to break in half then break free from this life, it’s not simple, but I dream about it every day. You put pressure down on the bleeding parts, stick a band-aid on and kiss it until I fall asleep in your sticky arms. We made this world now watch its destruction.

Mateo Perez Lara is a queer, non-binary, Latine poet from California. They received their M.F.A. in Poetry from Randolph College’s Creative Writing Program. They are an editor for Block Chronicles. They have a chapbook, Glitter Gods, published with Thirty West Publishing House. Their poems have been published in EOAGH, The Maine Review, PANK, and elsewhere.

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Stagger

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