Dear God, let me be something terrible,
jagged rocks by the sea and salt swallow. Something
made of bulldozers and a thousand spit of outburst.
I won’t blame anyone for my hands, I promise,
not even my mother. When I was inside her
I was beautiful. When I was inside her I was a heartbeat
thinking I don’t want to be anything else. Why did
you have to make me something else? Here’s a photo
of a great white shark feeding on flesh. Here’s a landslide
swallowing a forest. Time travel back into time
and space, here’s the big bang. At least, no one
was breathing yet. At least, I didn’t hurt anyone yet.
I’m terrible at being human. I am most selfish,
most frightening, most asteroid. So make me a planet
instead. Make it a thousand light-years away.
Give me storms and I’ll call them by my name.
Give me storms and I’ll become all of them.
Kalay Brillo is a contributing author to anthologies entitled Coming of Age under Summit Books and My Lot Is a Sky under Math Paper Press. Her poems and short stories cover topics of mental health, self-healing, feminism, and abuse, among others.
Space Art by Charles Bittinger