Gia Raquel

You hate compliments

Like someone told you a lie

And that lie has been trapped in your temporal lobe since middle school.

Sometimes when you speak

I try to see what you would look like if you were someone else

But you’re not someone else

And every time I forget that

There is a consequence of some sort.

I opened a fortune cookie last night because we ordered takeout

It said, ‘you are lucky you made the right choice’

Choice?

What choice?

Everything has been decided for me

And I can’t seem to catch up with the answers I’m being fed.

When I saw your smile poking through your boyish cheeks, even then,

I could not make a clear choice.

No, I am not lucky

I am torn and I am curious as to how I’ve ended up at the supermarket parking lot a quarter to midnight

With you in a shopping cart and a tarot card deck in my bag.

Even with 78 cards, none could foresee the utter intensity I felt toward the royal blue sky

As if to be absorbed completely,

No forgiveness, no pain

Only your eyes looking up

Pretending to believe in a God.