My mama used to call me
Wild child
Back when I wore vintage clothes
and I couldn’t find my car keys in the ignition
because I was committing felonies in the back seat
with a lighter and some ink
back when I was the only one in fishnets at a party
and not enough people had noticed
Back when I got an ambulance escort out of delta kappa
and my tox-screen tested positive for carelessness
Back when I was a yes girl
a hold your hand open and don’t look- just swallow
girl
Back when my mama called me wild child
Now my mama calls me Plain Jane
Tells me I don’t know who I am anymore
Cause I wear black turtlenecks
And I shop at the j crew outlet
My mama told me I lost it:
the feather in my hair
the sunshine at my heels
the black hole in the center of my palms
Plain jane, my mama calls me
Now that I take my medications
and stopped trying to medicate myself
Now that I’ve started walking across bridges
before throwing lit matches at them
to see if they would burn
only thought of them as sturdy
once their tresses had been singed
with my remorse
She says I’m not her wild child anymore
My mama, she says she’s proud of me now,
her plain Jane
But there used to be a galaxy in her eyes,
Nebulas that used to birth stars when she yelled at me
-like they were daring me to try one more time
Like they needed my internal combustion
To fuel theirs
“Full of joy and pain”
She used to say
“My wild child”
A cherry on top of arsenic I’d say
And she’d say exactly
Perhaps I’m not her wild child anymore
No more plaid doc martens and whiskey sours
Claiming my personality before I open my mouth
I’m not my mama’s wild child any more
not an unsteady concoction of
espresso shots
and cigarette smoke
I stopped expecting the waves to follow me
when I leave the beach
and I no longer look at the stars with envy-
as if burning out so brightly, dying so young,
would be as beautiful
If it were me
Maybe my mama never knew
Her wild child
Who thought the stars within her were a mirror image
All my best friends’ suicide notes refracting
Her wild child, who misunderstood
Never knew she needed to explain that her eyes
were a telescope
And all they showed was an unpredictable meteor shower
That would eventually rain down on earth
But maybe, when my mama calls me Plain Jane
She means that
I no longer look to the sky
For the passwords to the soils
Maybe she realizes,
I bought new clothes because I no longer
Had to consider carrying a matchbox in my
Back pocket
When you’re a wild child,
They tell you about the sunshine
and the feathers
and the stars
But they don’t tell you
That the most common flavor of ice cream bought,
Is vanilla
And that most people give away the cherries on top
Or ask for none at all
It’s not that I’ve made myself
more palatable
(I am still the cherry donated to the person at the table
Who likes tying them stems into knots in their mouth)
I’ve just stopped trying to be poisonous in my existence
And, honestly, there’s something about
being safe for human consumption
that I like
