a modern sonnet by Cleopatra Lim

i know that it is okay because i said yes but it should mean
that i don’t have to feel like a suckling pig before slaughter
and i did this, i think, to feel like an adult now that i’m eighteen
but i went too far– i go too far– ten bucks that he has a daughter

somehow i can see myself in an hour, picking the curly aged hairs he shed
off polka-dotted sheets that laid witness to my first lunar blood
and soon he’ll unlock my beloved chest, spill jewels of cherry-red–
hindsight says once a flower blooms, it’ll never again be a bud

but reason and rationale are always late and the party don’t start
til they walk in and see me: emptied and filled with cheap wine
and tears… they said when it happened, i would feel in my heart
completed, perfected, and his gaze would be sugary sunshine….

instead the bed shakes and i am seasick until the north star, i can mark.
he tries to see me but he can’t. i am with the stars that glow in the dark.

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