Pieces of sky

sometimes i find little pieces of sky stuck in my hair. blue. tangled. it makes me remember when it was summer and our sweaty legs clung to shorts and we could eat pancakes and it was all good. envelope sealing off my insides knife sliding over paper we plugged our wounds with redemption instead. instead of dirt, dirt i scavenge for now to fill the hurting parts of me, parts loneliness likes to come and attack and get off on. remember when i wore double denim and kept your name like a promise in my jeans pocket. remember all the photos of me smiling and looking beautiful and looking young, god, and looking young. i crave cities and your smoggy existence. god, looking young. something has twisted and broken inside me. i try to measure the torque. radius doesn’t make sense. i put up a glass wall made from the lenses of all the eyes that have looked at me. i sit behind it i try to reconcile with everyone on the other side. i evade touch. i smile.

there’s some kind of force that pushes and pulls at me without permission. there’s some voice begging for omission, people i can never write about because i wouldn’t want them to know i care. there’s days i still think about, pieces of sky that i’ve saved in my head in my hair in my hands. there’s happiness somewhere out there. there’s people in the window across from me. we try to understand each other. god, so young.

— Alana Dunlop is a U0 life science student. She has written four books of poetry. She loves deep fried pickles, her leopard print coat, and having more shoes than anybody.