Stuck in an Hourglass

A poem about fitting in where you don’t

Put me in a room half a floor up from sparkling socialites flirting for a tip, and paying it forward like a golden ticket.

Give! Give!

Until all those six-inch slips - and more to stick in the artisan’s mouth - Condense to sickly antlers on the 16th floor.

You’ve made me rock a wooden sliding door.

And waltz through sitting cocktail attire and unbuttoned business collars, as the bodies underneath stoop to sniff where my sheath opens up Around my knees.

My knees want stick and needle-covered earth, and shoulders to smother them, while I pray.

Instead they hang Where drunk men stumbling can use them as an opening.

~Poem by Chloe Paulina Hawes