J Divina Erickson is a 27-year-old poet living in the Bay Area. You can find some of her work in Three Line Poetry, Chinquapin, Pulp--,as well as other publications. She often spends her spare time hiking along the sky lines or in bed with her cats and a cup of hot chocolate.---------
Ugly Origami
I.
I folded flowers out of colored paper and scattered them across your bedspread
like stars. Later that night, I sneaked in and saw you staring out your window
overlooking the ghetto, tearing off the petals.
II.
I press my crevice against your edge and fold myself around your waist. My
wrists tuck into the knots of your spine and when we flex we form an owl.
III.
I tried to be an open book, but I was so boring you closed me. I tore out my pages,
folded them into ships and sunk them in my bathtub. The water changed from
clear to brown to brackish. With my last page I folded a paper-cup and used it
to wash the cuts in my mouth.
IV.
Water laps against the edge of the sandcastle, climbs the southern wall. A
stickman in a paper hat looks down at it from the cut, rooting himself, ready for
collapse.
V.
I fold a dream-catcher and put it above your bed. Its blues and greens make
water-like waves. For the next five nights you have nightmares, heavy with
rainstorms and mass flooding. I tell you they are psychological but you crumple it
in your fist, burn it in the fireplace.