Diabetic by Ayla Rogers

Diabetic by Ayla Rogers

I couldn’t help but notice

You look just like he did when you’re leaving

After just four hours, like four months got tired of waiting

And leapt off the end of the year

Like they wanted one more day—one more light

In the night of our growing tension

Like a ball of twine—strings of words to unravel,

To bind us

In a dialogue—one half silent, the other to save face

Say you want a life that’s more dramatic—

 Careful, boy—what the hell are you thinking

 Tossing those words around my apartment?

Look me in the eye and say this seems fun

Look me in the eye and tell me you’re lying

Next to me in your mind

That your empathy for this despair turns you

On to new ideas and more fulfilling hobbies

Whether or not I’m among them

Slow down—this is all a misunderstanding

And I promise

I’ll only ever lock the door

Behind you when you leave

When you leave, leaving looser things unlocked

Like lips spent half the night flapping

And the other half

Meaning without moving

Moving without getting

To the resolution we wanted

Really, do go on—it’s more than fine to finish

What you started

To lavish me with pretty punctuation

While I end my pleas in up-speak

Posing questions for you to speak up

Posing for polaroids I’ll perfect later

With my sophisticated software

To play back when you wear out

Of patience for my face

When you wear a frown

Or a look of indifference upon yours

I’m no more burdened

Than a delicate cake, weighed down by so much

Icing the sores from my latest

Sweet tooth and nailing

Oven mitts to convenient spots

Against my walls, preventing new burns

And botched experiments

It makes me think of eating things

And keeping them

Something that’s always posed—an unnatural challenge

Something that improves

My pictures when I pose with it

Like the only love I really need—the one for myself

So hard to come by now

With anyone else

With anyone who doesn’t wear infinity across his chest

It’s only ink—ink he’d better put to righting all these wrongs

To writing me off

The edge was so scary before jumping

Into this, though I’ve hardly quit falling

For the weight of cream and sugar heaped atop me

Caving in like a soufflé made too hollow for ornamentation

Falling, collapsing under the heft of saccharine

Divvied up in pieces, crumbling

Believe me when I say

This is no cake walk

But the savor is divine.