I play my cards so close to my chest
they might as well be tattoos
when people ask me for my past
I tell them the things that chase away
the truth, the secret to not lying
is to never get close to needing to
I say I’m scared of horses
and silverfish and leopard seals
I distract with the things they’ll find
funny or if they ask what I want to do
with my life and I change the subject
say some random fact from history:
that Edgar Allan Poe may have died
from rabies, that there were ships
in WWI called “razzle dazzles,” that onions
make you cry because sulfenic
acids are unstable and can rearrange into
gases, that each of a person’s eyes has a blindspot
that is never noticed because the eyes work together
to correct the gap
but here’s the thing, if you were the one who asked me
for some truth
I’d tell you my life, unravel it between us
so that you could see it from above, every
secret I’d give you, until you held them all
in your hands
I think you might tell me
where the gaps are

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chloe N. Clark‘s poems and fiction appear in Booth, Glass, Hobart, Little Fiction, Uncanny, and more. She is co-EIC of Cotton Xenomorph, writes for Nerds of a Feather, and teaches at Iowa State University. Her debut chapbook, The Science of Unvanishing Objects, is out from Finishing Line Press and she can be found on Twitter @PintsNCupcakes