PLACEBO

by Gaia Rajan

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The house you grew up in is a strip mall now. 
You’re angry when men look at you 
on the street and when they don’t. 
Your love left for the city and she’s never
coming back. You were too much, hungrier 
and hungrier, dependent and repulsed
by your dependence, like algae, depleting every wet 
and alive thing for miles. At the end 
you didn’t fight. You stole tulips 
from neighbors’ yards 
and made the pasta she taught you. 
You wore the necklace she gave you 
and slept in her bed. 
But hey, you’re alone now. 
You can do any drugs you want, kiss any cliff 
and drop off the edge. Isn’t this 
what you wanted? Isn’t this 
how you like yourself best? 
Bite the gravel or don’t. Either way 
you’re a rookie ghost. The animals 
that run from you are right to run.

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Gaia Rajan is the author of Killing It (Black Lawrence Press, 2022). His work has appeared in the Academy of American Poets Poem-A-Day, Best New Poets, the Best of the Net anthology, The Kenyon Review, and elsewhere. Gaia is an undergraduate at Carnegie Mellon University. He lives in Pittsburgh and online at @gaiarajan on Twitter or Instagram.