It’s harder than it looks, especially the morning after, falling for the old dragon
playing russian roulette with those brown bedroom eyes. Teach me how to cry
like a woman cause I’ve only ever been such a good boy, closed
off, thrashing with the masses, listening to Alice in Chains,
when it’s starting to get too hot in this mosh pit. I’m scrambling for sex
that shatters glass. Imagining the explosion in my pussy like Pop Rocks

bursting, bits unfurling their fizz against the roof of its mouth. Seven rocket
ships taking off for planets of passion with engines fueled by fallacies of forever and its a drag
that I should’ve known we wouldn’t have lasted when you didn’t want to have sex
on the moon. My breathe is sealed to the steel post of your bed frame from crying
out your name all those nights, wrists and ankles shackled in chains,
my life reflecting an indie version of Fifty Shades of Grey. I was getting too close

to becoming my mother so I began drinking bottles of Heinz ketchup, taking my clothes
off, feeling my stomach lining shapeshift into an In-N-Out thin white paper cup, rock
wall of lecherous lava. I even dreamt about searching for jewelry stores that would sell gold chain
necklaces engraved with our type of promises. Truth is, I didn’t, my dragon
fruit I never needed those sweet sentiments to get in the mood. I can hear my future daughter crying
now as I breast feed her bullets to build her a strong armour in the battle of the sexes

so she can have some sort of protection. Do men really think they are dripping sex
appeal when they say their favorite film is Pulp Fiction? When your girlfriend closes
her eyes at night I wonder if she tastes the words I write and the tears you’ve cried
since I’ve left. It feels like it was just recess when we were kneeling in onion grass playing rock,
paper, scissors when you confessed your crush. But I already had a dragonfly,
who hovered like a helicopter with me to every class. Eventually, he became too clingy, chained

to my side all the time, never stinging or biting. He was a good kisser but seasons change
so I broke it off and started hula hooping after school. My father showed me the Sex
Pistols not too long after and everything got loud. I developed a sharp tongue, dragon
eyes, fists perpetually squeezed tight. Anger radiating off my tiny ribs as Closer
To God by Nine Inch Nails became the album of my adolescence. Nothing was like rock
and roll if you wanted your heart ravaged. Each song a hammer to swallow, a crying

baby to be coddled as its head bangs a brave nipple. I’m running into traffic and maybe this is a cry
for help or maybe it’s that I no longer hear heartbreak’s hum just swishes of ketchup. Chained
to sin like Eve, I’m writing my poems as prayers trying to make Patti proud pumping punk rock
into my bloody tongue and doing cartwheels for everytime I’ve faked it during sex,
wishing I’d listened to my friend who said Ask him what his top five favorite songs are, a close
indicator of whether or not he’ll be able to get you off. Save your love for me, Dragon

Daddy cause in this fairytale you’re the crying young girl and I’m the golden prince close
by blade in hand. It must threaten you, the ways in which I’ve changed since I started sexting
with brass dragons, dragging myself down to the shore somehow still hard as a rock.



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Sara Sturek is a recovering New Yorker attending the University of Southern California. She is majoring in Creative Writing and Communications and probably also Caffeine Addiction. Her work has appeared in Third Point Press, Palaver Arts, and Haute. You can find her on Instagram @sassyy_ass.

*Image credit: Jesse Draxler, Untitled photo assemblage from the exhibition ‘Not The Sum Of Its Parts, Just The Parts’, Joseph Gross Gallery, 2016.