i stepped on tacks for two years in my teens because the thought of excavating my bedroom floor seemed harder than the occasional surprise stabbing on the soles of my feet
that’s a metaphor i guess like writing on my walls or not at all you see writing on the walls was maybe the most literal thing i did back then
“go then there are other worlds than these” in black paint on blue stephen king’s best sentence watching over me and promising escape to anywhere to the college i never went to but whose taped-up brochures made a collage of hope
what a mess!
when i did clean eventually it was big black bags of papers and stuffed toys a life in trash and the trash can fire (ok it wasn’t a trash can forgive me it was a popcorn tin legolas’s perfect face melting inwards) of the postcards my dad sent me
anyway
i thought that kind of destruction was what you did when you really meant something but the smoke alarm went off at 2am and i didn’t mean for that
don’t worry it’s all a long time past the room is spite green now or not spite i don’t know
do i have regrets? i guess but like that room i don’t think they’re mine anymore
alis hamilton is a poet, essayist and creator of multimedia zines. Their focus is on the ambivalence and confusion of gender, sexuality, and ideas of self. Their work has been featured in Shakespeare and Punk, Wrongdoing Mag, and High Shelf Press.