TWO POEMS by ROMY RHOADS EWING
phantom
I open Cosmo and they
Describe my form as just-enough. I
Dispense love; make a note of that.
Hyperfixations rekindle; I wear your eyes
On me like a limb.
I cut my bangs in the bathroom. I make
Them blue; the sink as well. Tell me to
Stay out of trouble, to stay in general.
i just work here
i.
I catch your eyes on me and I feel like I've won something I can never cash in. I hold my breath like I can will you to do the same, like I’ll release and you'll be gone, like the way paramedics say never to remove the thing that impales you, to live in limbo, to wait until someone who knows better comes along. The campfire smell won't part from my hair or my skin, and I'm so light I could float right out of here.
ii.
Gnawing at the sinewy white of the watermelon, I'm ravenous to be asked something, to be fed something pink and whole. Smoke sticks to you, too; I ask questions like you know any better than me, and I feel like I could watch this whole night like a movie, alone in the theater, an observer–not an asker. In the Bay and the Northwest, people with brains wired completely differently from ours have started to call themselves “disruptors,” and not derogatorily. What a sick and unknowable thing.
iii.
With thumbs stuck with marshmallow, cheeks filled up with air, hot and pink with gin, we talk about our friends, terrified. I tell you about the men I knew who would get eaten away at like that, by their own hands, holding their own bones like smoking guns, like rinds. You ask about me, about how I fill my time–I’m not the one who brought it up, make a note of that. When I’m at the apex of my pinkness, I let myself walk into it: someone pulls us out of it, conversation goes back to card games, back to video games. I sip something in silence, telling myself I’m not disappointed. Everyone has their preferred method of rot–it’s what makes us special.
iv.
I suck rind while the boys tire themselves out, and I let my form sit docile, camouflaged, but screaming at the cards nevertheless, at the way they fall. All I am is a stagehand and you’ll never know I saw you butcher those lines; I’m not the one pulling you away from it all, I’m nobody. They don’t let me use the hook.
Romy Rhoads Ewing (she/they) is a writer and photographer from Sacramento, California. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in BRAWL, HAD, Querencia Press, Nowhere Girl Collective, Anti-Heroin Chic, Major 7th Magazine, MEMEZINE, persephone’s fruit, UC Davis’s Open Ceilings Magazine, and Genrepunk Magazine. Her debut chapbook, please stay, was published by Bottlecap Press in 2024. They received their Bachelor of Arts in Child Development from Sacramento State University and also hold an Associate of Arts in Anthropology. She is currently studying Japanese.