I CANNOT STOP WRITING ABOUT MY ILL-ADVISED SEXPLOITS by Morgan Nikola-Wren

You see, I was never taught how

to stop answering to my mistakes

as though they were my only name.

I never learned how

to stop dragging each day behind me

so that every one of them was sure

to meet all my follies before sunset,

never once catching up

to where my feet were actually standing.

It’s no surprise I stumble

through poem after salacious poem.

I am a walking stew of

inconvenient wishes

and reckless habits.

Can you smell the soiled sheets I roll

into my cigarette,

though I haven’t smoked in years?

When the embers flare,

I place it filter-down into an incense holder.

I watch the nicotine stream rise to the ceiling

like a foul-mouthed prayer;

an incantation I cannot uncarve

from the underside of my tongue;

stories I cannot stop rending open.

I should have sat some of my darkest secrets

down around a fire years ago.

I should have told them all

that there are better ways to let people in

than through an open wound.

I should have whispered

in a voice soft as a velvet night

that there are kinder things

to invite into the deep of you

than your own tongue sharpened

into a trauma-shaped dagger.

Morgan Nikola-Wren is a winner of the Pangaea Worldwide Poetry Slam, 2016, and has published three books of poetry. Her debut book, Magic with Skin On, received a Goodreads Choice nomination for Best Poetry Book of 2017, and was listed in Barnes and Noble's '25 Must-Reads for National Poetry Month.' 
Morgan ran away with her husband's circus for a year, but now lives in Los Angeles and works at a school library. She is perpetually searching for new favorite words, more black clothing, and the perfect design for her next tattoo.