Dear In Headlights

By Alexa Curnutte

I.

This is love —  

vomit in a plastic tub.

I am hands on flaming head

   she is

   cold hand on

   back

   fawn’s eyes.

I am crying

bloody spittle

fat lips.

Hair is greasy clotted

fingers knotted

toothpaste snowflakes.

Stomach fluid emptying

staining blanket. Offering

a clean one.

It’s okay.

I’m so thin

this bed

has begun to hide me.

I am bare skin

I am pale skin

   in the tub

   on the rug, red drugged

   push me into a corner.

   Drooling, half gone.

II.

This is love —

searching you for yellow bubbles

searching mine for blood.

I am suckling

   on syringe.

III.

This is love —

blue bathwater flaccid

body hair bracken thorn

dry paper.

IV.

This is love.

Starving pills,

mother baby,

damply

   this is

   falling unconscious at breast.

Alexa Curnutte is a sophomore creative writing major at Interlochen Arts Academy. She is from Jackson Springs, North Carolina. Alexa is a fiction, nonfiction, and scripts editor for The Interlochen Review. She has received two Gold Keys and a National Medal for fiction from Scholastic Art and Writing Awards, as well as a Silver Key in poetry. She was a finalist in the 2015 Albion College Charles Crupi Memorial Poetry Contest, and her work has appeared several times in the Red Wheelbarrow. Alexa finds warm weather, the sound of the woods, and the Forrest Gump soundtrack ideal in her writing space.