Scott Sims Poems

Trigger Warning:
"I put my first boyfriend away"
I say at parties because I am a dangerous girl.
Because I am better at Russian roulette than beer pong.
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In 2012, Disney released
A line of villain dolls depicting Ursula,
The classically full-figured
sea witch from the little mermaid
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You quit burning
Your eyes no longer reflect the flames.
You think you're done.
Afterall, you've wrung the gasoline from your hair.
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Taking its name from the 1944 film The Gaslight,

gas-lighting is a form of mental abuse in which false
...

Bang
My body was in a mid air somersault:
Time stopped - almost seeming to collapse in on itself
Earth became sky
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By now, you know their names, their cheekbones—
the tender hands they offered when you walked in.

You know the quivering strength of prayer and the art of making God listen.
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Communicating should be a very straightforward and simple thing to do but for me it isn't easy
Social Anxiety is the fear of speaking to other people
It's how you want to talk but you can't
because you think what you are about to say is stupid
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I was born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1911 on 16th
Street.
By born, I mean they finish my construction.
I was erected as an edifice to the Almighty
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Sometimes, you are a lit match dropped into a boiling ocean. Sometimes, you are a stray dog proud of the sunrise after a long night of barking at the moon. Sometimes, you scream at the television, shadowbox mushroom clouds; your hand-to-hand hatred outclassed, outdated. You: post-apocalyptic litterbug. You: venomous spider in the basement of a burning building. You: whose anger is so vast, and so empty—all teeth, and no mouth, just that white rattle.

Remember: white supremacy is not a shark; it is the water. It is how we talk about racism as white hoods and confederate flags, knowing that you own those things, and we don't… as if we didn't own this history too, this system—we tread water.
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My little being, they tainted your obituary with wrong seven letters, S U I C, like this misery was something you wanted, like my belly burst sin, like I didn't thread your pieces together with the only joy I had left.

This home is your shrine now, your portrait is painted in Jack Daniels stains in the linoleum, the smell of your hair is trapped in billows of fireplace smoke, your laugh is a haunted house theme song I keep on a loop.
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