miss u - Gigi Bella

there are so many bad ex boyfriends i could have been quarantined with,

a world where i lived in new york city & had the three best bodega coffees

on my block memorized & ranked

it’s not that i’m a glutton for the past, i just think of a thing i miss for every

rice grain i plink into the instant pot, for what feels like the 1376th time

i do not miss normalcy, i miss never getting off the train at the marcy avenue stop

comparing too expensive cat food prices at the pet store, every HEB in texas

i have ever visited, i miss reading ada limon on the M train

muttering bright dead things to myself while a breakdancer spun over my head

i miss not getting kicked in the face but still thinking i might

i miss forgetting to bring a jacket to stand by the water in corpus

hitting my head on the metal rail guarding the Selena memorial, the best mariscos

the horchata jackson bought me after i passed out next to his car

i think about every time i didn’t choose the shoes i actually wanted to wear to the party

looked slightly less cute for the sake of comfort & it feels like a weird kind of

personal violence, comfort is all i have now, how empty it is in the face of fear

really i just want to walk past the windows at frontier and be afraid to see everyone

i’ve ever known eating breakfast, afraid to run into a past lover or friend over

a too perfect red drenched carne burrito

i never wanted to be an expert on how to best lose everything

i know some people have never been through this before

a world that seems like it could not split open anymore or cry any louder or sing

all the same songs as you when it is sad, one that ends & ends & ends

at the loss of your best friend, the bills you cannot pay, the food you cannot afford

the things you cannot be right now, in this moment, the things you wanted so badly

to be, people ask me how to write a poem, they say teach me & i say

have you ever dug around in your cookie dough ice cream to only eat the snowballs of frozen

dough? or forgiven someone because of all the too sparkly things you couldn’t forget that could

outbright all the bad, i say you’re already doing it, just holding

a magnifying glass over your joy, giving it a name when it seems like it isn’t there at all

especially then, i don’t want normalcy, i just want poems, my cats dirty feet

first thing in the morning, watermelon juice dribbling past my bottom lip, a step outside

a deep breath

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Gigi Bella has been ranked the tenth woman poet in the world, the two time Project X Bronx Poetry Champion as well as a literal mermaid. She is also a Pink Door Fellow, a National Poetry Slam Semifinalist & Champion. She has been featured on stages with Andrea Gibson, Sabrina Benaim, Olivia Gatwood and many others. Her chapbook, weird things, was featured on the instagram of pop singer/songwriter, Sara Bareilles. Her other work is featured on Button Poetry, Slamfind and in a variety of literary journals. Her book, big feelings, is available through Game Over Books and has been recommended by Small Press Distribution. gigibellapoetry.com