pact of the mousie (it's just where i look)

I want you to want me
and yet
I kinda wish you were gay

I'm only a woman where required by law!
...and other strange things you've heard me say

the overexerted membranes of my eyeballs
snap with the finality of natty suspenders
your shiny tuxedo shoes look like a high schooler's
and shiny-faced high schoolers look like me

I can't help it, I've never acted my own age
I've never looked like I belong down here
the chancel is a prison, a populated cage
I carry no purse for my gig day gear

but I have to remember, I'm just a girl
I'm just failing to be complicated
so constantly on the verge of tears
so tenderly broken and nauseated

others have clocked it, I jump out of my skin
I'm anxious and verbacious and ugly
forbidden to wink, you scroll on within
no longer do you look at me so smugly

I just wanna lie in the perfect sunshine of your smile
to stay and soak awhile
I just wanna be a good enough version of me

I'm not so foolish as to think that your attention could improve me
(it wouldn't even behoove me)
but we're so smiley, even still

'cause you know that any way we want it, that's the way we need it
you want something. you need something. you know something.
you're flirting, still still still

my dandy ukagaka whose blinding whiteness sears my hide
my pet peeve pet bassoonist in the tunnel of used-to-be-wide

my saint of perfect posture, my don of carpool greed
my dis-appointed eye-contact mirror with an unspoken fine-print screed

I can see it, crystal vision - us together, just a given
mini you, mini me, mini us, don't you see?

there's not enough of me left over if i try to go that way
i wish i'd shrink and disappear, insufficient instrument to play

and i think of reading it to you, all the gall of nineties rap
i think of the gift of explaining myself, of bridging the impossible gap

that's not the future, though. that's not the solemn way.

let the gap stay. let the gulf widen. let the yawn swallow all chance of recovery. let it pass, let it go, let it bleed.

let it bleed. i have to laugh. surely you see: my face is melting.

I wanna be somebody, and you were like that too. I promise, I don't want to love you. On my honor, I'd hate you if I could.

whatever it is, whatever it was, was it really all for good?

I can't escape it, I'm in love (with a pretty, wonderful guy)
shaking my fist at the stars above - I swear, I didn't try

but what's our pretty conclusion, our squares and ones at the end of the day?
I hate to say it, my friend, my friend

(my fine feathered fabulous formalwear friend)

it doesn't go away