I have bones to pick with existence –
who forced me to be here as a vulture,
coughing up marrow of my personality’s frame?
Who poised my skeleton in material decay
to walk among the inhabitable
spaces while my hands are raised in the air
in prayer or self defense –
there’s a pale girl who isn’t sure which
one she should be asking more of.
There’s a bird who is picking away
at the scoliosis in my spine, the serotonin
(or lack thereof) in the palpable scars
gasping across the folds of my frontal cortex, how about
my nervous system backfiring
like a space shuttle that ran out of fuel.
There’s empty music from the empty room across the hall
that roars and reminds me.
I kick at a speck of dust
because it is licking at the fireplace and I watch it
burst in the heat and sink into the flames.
Audrey Lee is a current senior at The Episcopal Academy in Newtown Square, Pennsylvania and will be attending Franklin and Marshall College this coming fall. She is the winner of the 2016 DeSales University Poetry Contest and her writing has been recognized by the Scholastic Art and Writing Awards and Columbia College of Chicago. She has attended programs by the University of Virginia and Ithaca College, and edits her school literary magazine, The Epolitan. Her work has been featured in or is forthcoming from The Claremont Review, Rookie Magazine, YARN: The Young Adult Review Network, Canvas Literary Journal, Moledro Magazine, Blue Marble Review, Eunoia Review, Half Mystic Journal, Paper Swans Press, and Teen Vogue. This summer, Audrey will attend the University of Iowa Young Writers’ Studio and intern at Apiary Magazine. Find her at audreymorganlee.weebly.com.