THINGS YOU'RE NOT ALLOWED TO LOOK AT
Nicole Smith
A solar eclipse. A once-in-a-lifetime event.
Your mother’s yearbook photo. The mirror
in a haunted house. That envelope.
Your own face unreversed, undistorted.
Whatever shit they’ll one day find in the Mariana Trench.
The neck of a friend. A friend and her soft neck
and how it yields to the careful ridge of her collarbones.
What could either be lasagna or
squirrel on the gravel shoulder of I-70.
Your father while he cries. The hungry throat
of an empty hallway behind you after you turn out the light.
Your camera roll from before August 24th, 12:02am.
The GOD BLESS cardboard sign hitching in the cold.
Or the person attached to it.
The cat in the box. The Doomsday Clock.
Your mother’s yearbook photo. The mirror
in a haunted house. That envelope.
Your own face unreversed, undistorted.
Whatever shit they’ll one day find in the Mariana Trench.
The neck of a friend. A friend and her soft neck
and how it yields to the careful ridge of her collarbones.
What could either be lasagna or
squirrel on the gravel shoulder of I-70.
Your father while he cries. The hungry throat
of an empty hallway behind you after you turn out the light.
Your camera roll from before August 24th, 12:02am.
The GOD BLESS cardboard sign hitching in the cold.
Or the person attached to it.
The cat in the box. The Doomsday Clock.
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(SC '25) Nicole is a poet, insomniac, hopeless romantic, cryptid enthusiast, and part-time female from Boulder, CO.
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