I am sober before my twenty-first birthday
and the loneliness of it almost made me quit,
sitting on the living room floor at a party,
fingers running through a house cat’s fur.
I shake hands with drunk strangers and pretend
the white wine on their breath doesn’t
give me a second-hand high like it’s
my sixteenth birthday again,
shotgunning a spliff over beer in a pick-up
truck passenger seat with a boy
I’ve loved for five minutes. (I’ll love him for
five more after the buzz dulls to a whimper.)
And when the man flirting with me over
his mixer asks me about myself, I apologize
when I cannot find the words he’s looking for. I
can’t concentrate on solid ground anymore.
Pining after seasickness like lost love, I’m
leaning over railings and searching through
bushes in lawns belonging to friends of friends,
perpetually trapped in a cycle of second removals.
When my friends have all found that love
in shrubs and flower pots and lampshades
and hand bags, they’ll fall asleep with it
on the living room floor like a house cat
and I’ll comb my hands through their hair,
trying to pull the dying embers from their
heads, through their roots, and drink my
lost youth through the tips of my fingers.
Casper Orr (he/him) is a Trans* and Disabled writer and artist with a passion for liminality and the profane. A two-time BOTN nominated writer, he has work published in The Ex-Puritan, Electric Literature, Arc Poetry, Grain, OROBOROS, Thimble, The BK’, and more. Currently serving as a reader for Epiphany, Casper’s also the former nonfiction senior editor for Fruitslice. He is currently in the process of compiling his debut poetry collection. He can be found on instagram @casperorr.