Vessel

By: IO

I am a vessel, and once I contained many things. For a while, I acquired more and more things, filled up with trinkets, accumulating in niches and cubbies, little corners and curves of my vessel shape until it resembled a person. 

Then I was emptied, tipped over without warning. All contents lost. Then I had nothing. I tried to refill the vessel, consuming more trinkets but they were too small and they fell out. The tipping over never stopped. Then I had nothing.

I walked away from the pile of trinkets I could not contain. Then I had nothing.

One day, I consumed a trinket different from the ones I tried to contain before, knew it would just fall out. But the trinket scratched the inside of the vessel and I knew of the trinket though I could not contain it. I kept consuming new trinkets, letting them scratch and claw and scar the vessel. The wounds seeped and released something I did not know I had contained and kept. Then I had magic. Then I contained one thing. 

I used the magic to find what had emptied my vessel. I tipped out their trinkets. The magic took the smaller trinkets, then larger ones, then the largest one. My vessel could not contain the trinkets but they scratched the sides until the vessel contained only scars and the other vessel was as empty as I had been. The other vessel shattered. 

I looked inside my vessel and saw that I now contained magic and vengeance. Then I had two things.

Pretend (a poetic attempt)

By: IO

She used to play pretend

with boys who didn’t mean it

Who said things like

“Don’t go” and

“I miss you” and

“I care.”

She meant to play pretend

until they called back, said 

again, said

“Yes, I’ll be honest with you.”

They called back, and she turned into a girl

To whom she would’ve once said,

“Oh, honey.”

Did she think she’d changed them

from fuckbois to men,

that these one-night stands and social experiments 

had foraged through her valley and lapped at her waterfall 

and re-emerged

renewed? improved?

“Bless your heart.”

She will not pretend any more, she says

she says, never again.

Lil miss is grown now, and hip to the game

in which there are more ways than one to play pretend.