Dodo Eraser

I asked ten times,
and you gave me ten silences.
I guess it’s fate.

We will never drink fridge-cold
Chardonnay in lipstick-stained flutes,
you will never meet my room, the turntable,
our shadows won’t dance under

 trembling

 lights.

How much must someone’s heart bleed
to rub its love in pixels,
like a stray cat,

always damp,
needy, lost

 in the midnight rain?

Your neon-lamped blue eyes
contradict this coldness you wear
like a worn-out wool sweater
to hold on to in winter.

They insist an ocean is meant
to be kissed by the sun—
sky-painted waves, pearled white swirls—
yet they never really warm,
and I drown in this freezing,
bone-wrecking sea.

No.

Reality check:
the wild nature

always wins.

Like whales on small fish,
like thorns in clumsy men’s thumbs,
and your lack of thirst
swallowing my own need
for water.

---

Karina Longo is a neurodiverse Brazilian-Italian poet based in Milan. Her poetry has been featured or is forthcoming in Expat Press, Be About It Press, Resurrection Mag, Some Words, Michigan City Review of Books, Prosetrics, Micromance Magazine, cataloguing poetry, Lucky Creature, Rough Diamond Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. Karina was nominated for the Pushcart Prize. She is the EIC of La Rotonde Review. Find her on X: @TheDarkestStar_