“You and Me: How We Should Be Vs. How We Are” by Carlisle Ziesig

You are cotton candy covered in kerosene,

Sticky sweet sugar that reeks of lighter fluid

And expired chocolate milk: Everything Nice, 

Like half-eaten, burnt candy hearts,

A diabetic’s heart-melting dream. 


You, with your periwinkle ties 

And pinprick puns, pointing

To passion flowers and shelves of damaged

Goods: a perfect Jinn waiting

To devour my dreams.


You turn my person into peonies,

Cover me 

In sheens of shear liquid terror

And carcinogenic matter that flows 

Past parched, punch-drunk lips in

Tangents of sour/sick tastes:

My creation brought on by you.   


I am only a faithful fantasy to you,

One of slaughtered cherries and stuff that spills  

Across MRI machines when you’re made of too much metal,

Matching the pretty present

You left on the plush tiles that bruise my mangled, malleable body: Jam.


We should be in an apple field

Where, as the rainclouds form,

We huddle, hiding together in

Frosty, forgotten summer silence,

Unable and unwilling to part.

Our bodies bending into one another,

Binding our beings in dewy, sickled air,

Turning us into sweet applesauce.


Instead, we are a different sort of pair.

You are a rat under hot metal,

Swimming through warm lakes,

Blunt teeth tearing, splitting sides,

Oozing jam, jam, everywhere.

Tearing through me. 


We are not sweet sugary things bound in an ample apple field.


You are deceased decency 

And I am no longer a spotless body 

With you. I am not that happy,

Helpless, hurt-less person anymore. 

We are matched.

The mangled soul and spilled compote:


Biographical Note: Carlisle Ziesig is a full-time undergraduate student at Florida State University going for dual degrees is Creative Writing and Psychology. She has always been a writer at heart and often takes inspiration from life, mental illness, and psychology in general, though her cats and cat ears make appearances as well.