To Whom It May Concern

by Natalie Schlosberg

Dear child,
It’s been countless blurry months since your eviction;
He remembers you now;
A picked and bitten body devoured out,
Whole slabs of maiden skin raw and missing.
For a girl you were, Child, a lovely drought.
Now the world quickly reminds you that the time to plead had passed and
Because of this,
Dear Child,
You cannot ask.
You must not wonder if you had lied in the trunk
And if he had felt like enough,          
If you would still be begging alcohol to help you swallow down the sins force-fed to you in slurry kissing and 2am kidnappings.
You cannot pray for your blood to be born again
Even if morality is not having to wear around what was traced with teeth and burned-
Because did you even listen, pretty girl?
Dear Child,
You were disposable territory with cigarette holes;
There’s no time to be cutting glasses and smashing glasses and gulping glasses to a chant of
“If you leave me take my body” 
Dear Boy,
You owe her body, 
a home, baptized in what righteousness and honor you claimed to know.
Dear Child,
He knows he makes you feel like your darkest whispers, buried warm under childhood blankets, 
Need to be righteous and undrunk and pure
Dear Child,
Do not wonder if he knows that you were young quarry;
Your flesh was sugar-dipped and even under possession running with silly demons 
He tasted the simple sweetness of your eyelashes and pale pink giggles of your fingernails, 
Still, I will ask him for you.
Dear Boy,
Did you understand that a girl was mapping her world,
her silly summer camp tongue, her marble notebook daydreams-
Not to be confused with your purgatory?
Dear world,
Why am I the one who should have known?
Dear him,
we’ve been in the car shivering since you left us that way but
I still...
I still cannot find the scar.
I need to know where you stashed it in her body while she was dreaming,
Asking God to know why I feel like you’ll never be leaving.
Dear Child,
When I believe in you,
We can say it with the lights out.
Dear Child,
When I trust you,
I can show my face with the lights on.
Dear Her,
When I am better,
I can come back to life.
Dear Boy,
When I am together,
I will come back to life.
Dear Boy,
For her, when I am entire, I will come back to life
And for her, because she is tired,
I will push you and your
“honor”
And your
“righteousness”
Just as equally out of it,
you silly, silly boy.