I eat your words like pebbles
that weigh down my jaw,
follow the glint in your eyes,
the tremor of your lips.

Soon the stones add up,
spilling to the floor,
and I slip into your tattered loafers,
tiptoe through your rough world.

I spit out the rocks
and take off your shoes,
once you’re done talking
and your voice fades.

Then I leave them on the roadside
for others to pick up,
the weight in my mouth
slowly lifting.

Jackie Chou is a Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee whose poem Formosa was a finalist in the 2023 Stephen A DiBiase Poetry Prize. She has numerous poems published by Fevers of the Mind Poetry Digest inspired by the late great Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Pablo Neruda, Langston Hughes, Jack Kerouac, and others. Her two collections of poetry, Finding My Heart in Finding My Heart in Love and Loss and the Sorceress, published by cyberwit in 2023, can be purchased on Amazon.