An open poem to the online dating girl
You are showered by messages
From every perverted minnow
Nibbling at your fingers
Like sperm at the shell
Of an unperturbed egg.
I imagine your ten sets of eyes
Gazing my way across a library
Or bar
Or quad
Or hiking trip
Or airport
Or foreign country
To be gobbled up by me
And exploded out of my heart
Into ten sets of diamonds
Sent up to the sky
To brighten my nights.
You are the unattainable goddess
You always thought you could be
Never to be attained with your
One strike policy.
I tap on the glass of your aquarium
As you recline on your hot rock.
The thousands of perverted minnows
Nibbling at your fingers.
Ten flashes of you from one
To seven years ago.
One from the bar with your favorite up drink…
One of you holding your infant niece…
One of you with your best gay male friend
Who is coddling your breasts in a way I never would…
One of you in Swaziland helping strangers reap that one plant…
One of you with your attractive sister who is married…
One of you at a Cubs game with your Cubs shirt and your Cubs hat…
One of you in bed asleep with your awake arm taking your picture…
One of you before a night out dressed in slinky black
Showing me the back of your phone…
One of you maybe naked, or at least topless or with a strapless dress,
I’m not sure what’s going on there…
One of you with your coffee and book or friends and drinks
Or sweater and Ireland or gown and harshly cropped out male friend
That you are obviously in love with at the time.
All of you happy, clearly not needing a man or anything else from me
Despite the undercurrent beneath the hopeful nirvana you’ve self-described.
I ping you something clever
An iridescent coin beneath the waves
An otherwise brilliant piece of prose
A rose in a field of sunflowers
Never to be read due to your policy
Of Select All…Delete to the last 100 messages
You have not had time to read
In the last week due to work
Or drinking with friends
Or traveling to Ireland
Or helping the Swazis
Or hanging with your hot married sister
Or being naked
Or flirting with your gay BFF
Or putting on makeup before a night out
Or going to a Cubs game
Or sleeping
Or cropping out exes
Or drinking coffee and reading
Without me.
