Love & Whopper Wrappers
My brothers throw cockroaches in my bathwater and my father cuts off my braids. All the people that say they love me shove me down hills and spit in my spaghetti. You were born too beautiful, my dead mother says. I rip off mask after mask in the morning mirror looking for the girl who looks like god’s fingerprint. I don’t have enough money to run away—besides the next town over is the City of Enemies. I go dumpster-diving for dreamcatchers, and I find a stray dog instead. His bristly coat is covered in sticky Coca-Cola. He doesn’t bite me. He cries tears of belonging. He’d thought he would die on a wad of whopper wrappers. I bring him home and call him Love. I convince everyone he’d been ours all along, but they’d been too busy playing with matches to notice. I warn them, “Love snaps on a dime,” but my father has to lose a middle finger, before they believe me.
AMANDA CHIADO is the author of Vitiligod: The Ascension of Michael Jackson (Dancing Girl Press). Her work has most recently appeared in Pithead Chapel, Rhino, The Pinch Journal, and The Offing. Her poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart & Best of the Net. She is the Director of Arts Education at the San Benito County Arts Council, is a California Poet in the Schools, and edits for Jersey Devil Press. www.amandachiado.com