Paytan Douglas

Words cloy and burn my throat like black tar before it’s crushed into immovable pavement. The ones that escape are at a decibel only audible to K-9s finely attuned to agonizing pleas for a swift death.

After I run out of oxygen, my mouth snaps shut with the realization that even the K-9s didn’t give a shit.

For someone so proud of her wit, it reaches the end of its rope fairly quickly.

Pride, too, is drowned by asphalt.

Desperate for affection yet never knowing what to do with it once received. More than love, lust follows like a dark cloud collecting fat droplets before a storm. Leers should be better than nothing, according to most onlookers, but they prick my skin like an itchy sunburn begging to be scratched.

When blisters boil over and ooze rank pus from my pores, then—and only then—people start to pay attention.