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1 poem
by
Britt DiBartolo

Britt DiBartolo is a poet living in Asheville, North Carolina. She recently graduated with her Master’s in English literature from the University of Tennessee and now teaches research and writing at UNC-Asheville. Her work has appeared/is forthcoming in Tilted House Review, Pigeon Parade Quarterly, Vagabond City Lit, and elsewhere. She’s @frangipansy on Instagram.

Mom, you have to come pick me up. I’m comparing my break up to a natural disaster AGAIN

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what if i love bombed right here                                all over your front door

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what if i eternal sunshine of the spotless mind-ed you out of my fevered brain FOREVER

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what if       after i’m dead…   instead of to science,  i wrapped up and donated my   popcorn lungs

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to you                 true, there is a pleasure about it         being heat close to the live wire of a feeling

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giving the apocalypse a five star google rating    time collapsing and not getting up off of the floor

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even if you nudge it        asking if it’s okay                sometimes, you know, the mind bleeds a little

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sometimes you have to part your hair   a new way              or it makes a mess          i dreamed

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a plane spilled its guts to me              i dreamed an avalanche asked                       to marry me

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my movie reaction to getting dumped: first, the street light spasmed,         a werewolf,

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somewhere, howled,   the moon fell out of the sky and onto me and               then exploded!       

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the reek of loss that seeps from all old breaks, and last:                               gratitude.       

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not far from the night i watched the world end like an old movie credit’s reel    campy and fade in

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to black: fin.     i woke in a nurse practitioner named kelsey’s arms     you hit your head, she said.

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in the blinking dark, a crowd, concerned, gathered           glad i was alive, glad they didn’t just see

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somebody die.            here, i play my own short movie of you               splices of last moments   

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all the ones i couldn’t help but memorize      and your back                  walking through doorways

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towards a world where you lose me, and are okay that i’m not in it:                 your movie.

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