The State Is Not My Lover

if it dies I will not shed a tear.

I don’t really know her or what she

wants from me,

the men who made her, or how I’m

supposed to live here-

sweltering in a chaos

that ain’t for my

sake.

Unwilling as I am to bear the responsibility

of accumulated force.

.

Collective destiny can only be spread

so thin.

Before I reach for the knife-

To cut off the other twisted wing

and plummet

all the way back to the sweet earth.

.

They’re flying us somewhere

and I did not elect to go right into the mad eye of

the sun

.

In The State my momma don’t love me-

I am never enough

Laying down looking at the clouds

certain of my calculus that to survive

here would

cost me bails of my dignity

an amount of my humanity that I could not do to expel

Coraline James Seksinsky is a musician, writer, and begrudging worker who’s lived the vast majority of her life in Cheshire County, New Hampshire. Currently, she resides in middle Tennessee with her boyfriend in an old farmhouse.