“Smart Girl”

Jackie Andrea Winslow || Fall 2024

She doesn’t quite know what it is, this viscous thing, but it’s as dark green as his eyes,
And she’s standing knee-deep in a simmering vat of it, and her legs are numb.
What a sharp type of blanket this is, she thinks,
Covering her eyes and leaving knees so grossly exposed. She was a smart girl;
She always thought she’d be smarter than to pick up a razor
And brush her teeth with it, she says out loud to no one,
Her voice stretching out for miles and reaching the places her arms can’t.
She thought she’d be smarter than to drive his car into her own house.
A very smart girl; everyone thought she’d be smarter than to try to love someone like him.
But what does logic have to do with anything
When she’s standing in a vat of something dark green and viscous and numbingly hot
And her skin, the skin he made his, is starting to peel?