You laugh.
It’s so funny.
Yes, it’s hysterical
the way you mock me,
with monsters so deep down
in my lungs, I’m gagging up
a mixture of my own laughter.
But I’m laughing at you
and I can’t stop.
I can’t stop imagining your face
when my monsters come out
to tell you, there’s nothing funny here,
except the joke of you and me.
I laugh.
It’s so funny
the way it never was.
But that’s all you had
for me and against me.
Hold it over me like a nail
in the coffin of my heart
shaped broken,
like my dreams and yours
that never broke
because we didn’t make any.
You’re so afraid of the fact
that I’m smarter than you,
shovel the dirt from your hands
on top of me, seal the burial
with drops of blood and spit.
Remember how I never was
your equal, but an equation
you never solved,
cancel me out
let the sides weigh the same,
but they never will.
I was always more.
I am more.
-Stephanie Bennett-Henry
