How I Lost My Chastity
Holly Lyn Walrath
How much more trash can I stuff
under my skin. How much more
entropy can I let in. When we
went underground we expected
a bit of dirty romance. How quickly
we were proven wrong. I asked you
what happened to the stars. You
deemed them wasteful. I crawl in
among the pipes and lay my body
at crossroads, the waste upon waste.
I can’t tell which is me anymore.
Will little pieces of me get swept
up in the water. Would you drink
me, would you. Look, I think
you should just pave me over. I’ll
still be here beneath it all, I just
can’t bear for you to see all my
debris like this.
Holly Lyn Walrath is a writer of poetry and short fiction. Her work has appeared in Strange Horizons, Kaleidotrope, and Crab Fat Magazine, and her poetry was nominated for an SFPA Rhysling Award. She is a freelance editor, contract editor with Writership.com, and volunteer with Writespace, a nonprofit literary center in Houston, Texas. She currently resides in Seabrook, Texas. Find her on Twitter @hollylynwalrath or at hlwalrath.com.