Each Night the Girl Makes a New Resolution

 
Tonight I’ll be a dust mote on the red desk. An ant crawling outside the house. Tonight I’ll slip between my shadow and yours. Lock my door. Hide in the closet. Cover myself with caution tape. Bathe in trash. Tonight I’ll be the rabbit’s heartbeat and quivering nose. I’ll pretend I’m dead. Pretend I’m on Mars. Tonight I’ll forget.
 
Tonight I’ll speak in tongues. Tonight I’ll fly at you— become a hundred palmetto bugs. Sting you like a jellyfish. Watch from the ceiling. Film everything. Take notes. Hide inside a book. Call on God. Jesus. Buddha. Kali. Granny. Tonight I’ll forget.
 
Tonight you’ll cry before. During. After. Tonight you’ll admit you’ve done wrong. You’ll stop. You’ll stop. You’ll stop. Tonight I’ll forget.
 
Tonight you’ll stay the fuck away. Get help. Get me help. Tonight it ends. Tonight I’ll fight back. Tonight I’ll forget.
 
Tonight I’ll kill you in your sleep. Tonight I’ll cut myself. Swallow pills. Kill myself. Tonight I’ll forget.
 
Tonight I’ll stare you in the eyes the whole time and make you watch. Tonight I’ll forget.
 
Tonight.
 
Forget.
 
Tonight.
 
 
 

Avery Moselle Guess received a 2015 NEA Fellowship for Poetry. She’s a PhD student at USD and assistant editor for poetry at South Dakota Review. Recent publications include poems in Thrush, Rogue Agent, Glass, Rust + Moth, and Deaf Poets Society and creative non-fiction in Entropy and The Manifest-Station. Her chapbook, The Patient Admits, is forthcoming from dancing girl press in summer 2017, and her first full-length collection of poetry will be published in April 2019 by Black Lawrence Press.