A girl forgets she has a body
she can feel, that she exists
outside this bubble she’s created.
Once she would choose escape, run
away to a place with warm skies
and salty air. Now she stays grounded
or at least tries. She nods to the other
runners she sees, fewer each day. No
words are exchanged, a mute nod
of encouragement, sometimes
a wave. This world looks so
different from what she imagined.
She sometimes wishes to go back
to when the anxiety that raced
through her blood was due to the lover
whose name she rarely breathed
into existence. Now she stares
out windows, the world trudging
forward in a strangely silent way—
like a movie without sound, her
motions exaggerated. But if there’s no
one to witness it does it matter
if she cooks in her underwear? Does
it matter if she dances to 80s hits
at midnight? She bakes brownies,
licks the spatula, pulls the pan
out early so the brownies are so gooey
she needs a spoon to eat them. She does
this, cross-legged on the couch, her dog
curled up beside her, the world slowly
turning outside, death creeping
a little closer each day.
Courtney LeBlanc is the author of Beautiful & Full of Monsters (Vegetarian Alcoholic Press), chapbooks All in the Family (Bottlecap Press) and The Violence Within (Flutter Press). She is also the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Riot in Your Throat, an independent poetry press. She has her MBA from University of Baltimore and her MFA from Queens University of Charlotte. She loves nail polish, tattoos, and a soy latte each morning. Read her publications on her blog: http://www.wordperv.com. Follow her on twitter: @wordperv, and IG: @wordperv79.
The Cabinet of Heed 