The Homewrecker’s IKEA Bed

Photo: © Olga Breydo. All Rights Reserved.

I was born hesitant  /  but I’m a wolf now  /  like my father  /  I can smell out the throat  /  from miles away  /  you know  /  like how you can smell a Chili’s  /  right off the highway  /  when I was little  /  I ate raw steak at Chili’s  /  is that normal  /  when I was older  /  I ate three children  and a wife  /  because I wanted to taste the husband  /  is that normal  / anyway  /  it was easy  /  I was so goddamn beautiful he fucked me  /  in his daughter’s pastel  /  IKEA bed  /  at eighteen! and after  /  when I looked in the mirror  /  I thought  /    whose waist is this on my hips  /  whose scent is this on the bedsheets /  and he’d beg  /  please don’t  /  but for a whole year  /  his hands  /  and my neck  /  and their house  /  smelled like Marc Jacobs Daisy  /   he loved me  /  he loved it  /  scented  /  filthy  /  she burned those bedsheets  /  the whole house  /  maybe  /  my shadow is as long as the flames are  /  behind me  /  searing the ends  /  to keep them from raveling  /  what does it matter!  /  I’ve worn Aviators over my swan face   /  every  junk  /  day  / since  /

Alaina Bainbridge is currently earning her MFA in Poetry at the University of Colorado Boulder. Her work focuses on violence against the female body. Her poems can be found in Dreamers Magazine, Blacklist Journal, and Cellar Door. Alaina lives in Boulder, Colorado, where she spends a lot of time rock climbing in the Front Range.

Appears In

Issue 9

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