BFF

I fed her red gummy bears all through that doubt
bender over the post-Internet album

she’d produced in her bedroom.
I called her songs Transcendent

square dances for claymation elf assassins.
I massaged her fingers,

stiff and callused from fiddling knobs. 
I was the girl in thrall to her girl

genius, no ambition beyond
buying her tequila shots and feeling blessed.

She hated me for it, of course.
The ephemeralization of my personality,

the way I wanted her to inhale me.
To please her I tried to write poetry, forced whimsy,

to weird it up and be the boss, but it was obvious
I longed to be her chaste wifey, to ball frilly socks.

We filmed a music video in the Mojave,
but I just couldn’t writhe fluidly. Coyotes

nipped my ankles, chain mail chafed my nipples.
I ended up on cactus de-fanging duty.

She finally replaced me with a cyborg Dolly Parton,
and every night I imagine the pair of them, 

giggling in some after-hours washroom  
while they rail angel dust and braid each other’s hair.  

Catriona Wright is a writer, editor, and teacher. Table Manners, her debut poetry collection, is now out with Véhicule Press in April 2017. She lives in Toronto, ON.