Paper Straw

Tessa Roberts

Raindrops ignite,
casting filaments of fire
into flaxen pigtails. A sizzle —
a laugh. Something
dissolves in the heat.

Whispers siphon
through rusted pipeline.
Cover your mouth —
childhood is coded
in omission.

It braids itself
into fractured certainties,
looped tight around both wrists,
worn like relics.

Crescent grins glint
with a carnivore’s charm.
Beads rattle
across asphalt,
a rosary broken
on the throat of history.

Stoplights bleed.
Bodies drag.
The living don’t always
move. Declarations smear
into bitumen—
names scrawled in viscera,
proof that someone
was here.

You turn eighteen.
There’s cake.
Smoke uncurls.
Applause.
And just like that —

it slips.
The soft part.
The hush.
The brief, bright conviction
that they meant it.