A Messy Little Self-Portrait

i like white nectarines

but not yellow ones

i like white peaches

but not yellow ones

i like white grapes

but not red ones-

i swear i’m not a racist-

i like cheez-its if they’re out of a container but

NOT out of a bag.

i’m just a little weird

in a tolerable way, i think. i hope.

i’m a slytherin but i’m also in

amity, and i guess that means i’m a

vegetable farmer with a rebellious streak.

i guess it means i find myself

in the middle of violence and bad ideas,

even though i

crave the peace.

my cousin calls me narc,

not as in ‘narcissist’

not as in 'narco'-

the spanish word for ‘drug dealer’-

narc as in narcoleptic

not because i’m narcoleptic but because

i honestly could be.

i never learned to say pecan 'pe-KAWN' or

salmon 'SA-mun'

so i say things like

'PEE-kin' and 'SAL-mun' and people say that

when i’m mad-

which is often-

i get a thick hispanic accent and, well,

i guess our demons are in all of us.

i’m a fish out of water that can’t swim,

can't live on land or otherwise

there are only 84 girls in my

graduating class and

8 of them are named sofia, so don’t take it

personally if you say my name and

i don’t bother turning around

it’s just very unlikely that it’s me.

i hate sports-

sorry, athletes-

i’ve just never seen the point of running

around in circles and

throwing a ball in a hole

i’d rather go for a walk in the suburbs and

see the kids in their swim shorts at the

community pool

old guys washing precious cars and their

women making dinner while watching the real

housewives of whatever county and

it’s all so strange to me, how people live,

and even stranger how they die in a hospital

with white walls and a monitor beeping

away their time,

surrounded by ironic cards and

creepy stuffed bears

that don’t mean anything.

i don’t know.

i’m not scared of the act of death, i have no

issue with the pain

i don’t mind if my photo is on

nobody’s ofrenda,

i don’t mind if they forget

i just want to bleed out in the snow

with douglas firs above me

and no one around me to

upset.