Magella,
the most beautiful girl I saw in Brooklyn,
seen in real life.
(Though tonight, she talks, she has bad breath.)
How she can make her name,
that sounds like a chewy thing you can’t swallow,
seem soft and delicate?
I won’t ever get to understand her power.
The bundled up terror,
the knife of wit.
She first entered with two tacos.
Her body so tiny the meat seemed to balance her as she walked towards.
I waited on the couch.
She leaned over the coffee table,
ate them with hot sauce,
told me about a 36-hour Tinder date.
I had only just met her, and I was a little afraid of her,
but that is what made me want to listen.
I liked how open she was about her relationships,
even though she wasn’t at all my friend.
She made me feel less alone in my head.
I think so much about what I want to say back to her,
and my memory is so poor,
I remember it as already being said.
She says a relationship with me is the frustration of calling the cable company,
talking to an unknown.
No trust there,
I see.
But in some ways,
her knives,
I bleed a little.
Maybe she would have put them away,
the guns and knives and snakes she keeps at her pointed fingertips,
but I wouldn't want her spirit to flicker away.
To be with me is to weaken.
A glow deeply radiates out of her chest, despite these defenses.
A dish, the sun, her face.
She has angels.
I turn.
If only for a few years,
Magella.
-Andrea Grassi
