Manic Pixie Dream Girl Poem by Olivia Gatwood

Manic pixie dream girl says, ‘have you heard this record? '
Manic pixie dream girl says let me save you with this record.
Let me put the headphones on for you, and smile, while you listen;
cut to your point of view, watch me smile while you listen.

Hear that? That's the sound of you becoming a better person.
I'm gonna paint a picture of a bird on your beige wall without your permission and you're gonna love it.
And you thought you hated birds.
See me? Encouraging you to take risks?
Manic pixie dream girl wants you to do something you've never done before.
Like go swing-dancing, or smile.

You wanna know my name? You never call me by it anyway.
If I had to guess, it would probably be a season, or after a dead actress who you loved as a child.
But this isn't about me!
This is about you, and your cubicle job, your white bedroom, your white Honda, your white mother.

Manic pixie dream girl says I'm going to save you.
Says, don't worry, you are still the lead role. This is your love story about the way I teach you to live.
Everything they know about me they will learn when it is projected onto you, watch the way you pick up my bad habits and make them look good.
Manic pixie dream girl talks too much. Says bad words out loud and cries at the commercials.
That makes me a funny woman, right?
The kind people like to laugh at?
It's easy to root for you when I act like this, so disagreeable, such a manic dream, dream girl, your almost broken accessory.

Manic pixie dream girls says let's play make believe with my body.
I'll be a vintage dress in an empty prescription bottle, good girl, just bad enough, a burp and a curtsy.
Let me be not too pretty, hair fried from all that pink dye, sex when you need it, puppet when you're bored.
Let me build myself smaller than you, let me apologize when I get caught acting bigger than you.
Let me always wait for this, let me work for this.


The convenient thing about being a magical woman is that I can be gone as quickly as I came.
And when you are a whole person for the first time, the movie is over.
Manic pixie dream girl doesn't go on; there's no need for her anymore.
Manic pixie dream girl is too dream girl, and you just woke up.

Once, I told you I was afraid of my father, and for a moment, I looked so human, the audience lost interest.
You saw the crow's feet at the sides of my eyes and a small chip on my front tooth.
I looked just like everyone else.