Alyssa Gaines

/ sestina for the feeling of wanting to shed all your skin, wash it, flip it inside out

whatever it’s called when you must put yourself back on like a hide /

i watched myself become a soft woman. fucked.
and my ilium cracked like a wishbone
hands meeting rushing to grab the last piece
of me like a rotting roadkill carcass
both our hands bloody and love red with game
measuring both our halves against the moon

how did i get here, matched by this here moon?
look how my bones bend and make me woman. fucked
blushing desperation visibly game
and him holding my hand like a wishbone
and then him cradling me like a carcass
and him cracking me into more pieces

i have always wanted to be pieces
to be a good girl as full as the moon
fragrant and soft as a roadkill carcass
watched how they all hold the rotting women fucked
hope in their steady hands like a wishbone
break them and mount them on the walls like game

to be watched and unassuming and game,
used and consumed in all of my pieces,
to break graceful and share like a wishbone,
to shine dark and elegant as the moon,
and then under that same moon made woman, fucked,
to after lay done like someone’s carcass–

this is what she gets a stink like carcass
she always admired paraded like game
her guts spilling out like a loose woman, fucked
finally too soft too bloody, pieces
crunched under teeth smiling white as the moon
sucked all the meat til she’s only wishbone

imagine its rough texture this wishbone
protruding through her delicate carcass
parked here forever left under this moon
caught, a deer in headlights, she is so game
scattering under this car her pieces
bleeding all over like a good woman fucked.

parking lot woman, twisted bone wishing this was only a game
like the movies, moon stripped bones broken i could take the biggest piece
home, to find my body new, carcass behind in this backseat, mouth froze open under a wolf howling up at the
moon. no, it’s all fucked.

Alyssa Gaines

Alyssa Gaines

Poetry

Summer 2025

fucked