things I want to say to people but don’t

Can you just fill this with vodka?
Like how much would that cost?

I actually don’t eat cereal anymore due to my insect phobia.

I realize that you
were thinking in horizontal
lines, & I –
vertically.

If that’s your low-key way of asking if I know a drug dealer –

I don’t.

I will always be afraid of men. If that’s misandrist,
add it to the list. I’m arachnophobic, too.

You were always kind of hot,
in like an I-would-never-date-you kind of way.

I’m not willing to be your fuck girl.

But I am willing to be devastating.

We close our eyes when we kiss to shut out everything else sensory.

How many people on earth
are taking a deep breath in
at the same time as you?

Am I too far in a hole? Oh no,
I’m just dancing around the rim of it not entirely sure
how to fall in or how to walk away. But anyway,
what would you do even if I were?

In seven years, you never screamed my name once.

I trade one form of lifetime commitment for another
because I’m that cliché.

Pro tip: Don’t be cheap as fuck.

Paige Melin is a poet, editor, and feminist from Buffalo, NY. She is the author of the book of poetry Puddles of an Open (BlazeVOX, 2016) and the micro chapbook MTL/BFL//ÉTÉ/QUINZE (Buffalo Ochre Papers, 2016). Her writing has won awards through the Academy of American Poets and the Albert Cook, Mac Hammond, and John Logan Prize for Poetry. She co-founded and edits steel bellow: a purely buffalo literary magazine. She has an M.A. from the University of Maine, where she served as Editorial Assistant for Paideuma: Modern and Contemporary Poetry.