Questionnaire

Is this my reward for survival? Another winter of reviving myself every night–
Did I express interest in return to the time of losing my mind?
Did I choose the wrong path for my orbit?
I saw omens in the streets and I split in the process.
I have never been much for nostalgia. You and I don’t taste the same things in the air.
Sometimes I hate the way you talk; the tilt of your head. My lack of functional ambition, desire for retribution, but I have no sins to punish. No offspring to rebuke.
Our story is etiological. Ask me who created this.
I cannot identify the clause but I’d have sworn I was the cause of all this
wretched misfortune. I think I am the curse. Computers stop working around me.
Ask me what I think of clocks.
Do you have hemophilia? Anemia? Are you scared of snakes, are there bug bites on your spine?
Are you lonely? Does that scare you?
Any allergies? Do I scare you?
Sign here.

Do I have permission to touch you? Do I have permission to hold your head underwater, hold your name in my fist, share it with a few close friends under the pretense of forgiveness?
All your information remains private. Click here.

You have to take the dog by the throat– no– the bird by the left wing–
Kill two bulls with one bullet–
Do you wear glasses? Can you sew? Do you remember me?
Do you remember the feeling of your finger on the trigger, learning the scent of ammunition, the weight of the bulletproof vest on your shoulders? Strumming the line between terror and pride, thinking, God! My body is cardboard, and Don’t you people have any self-preservation instinct?
I am not responsible for what comes out of your mouth. I am not here to bear little crosses, to douse bridges in gasoline.
Our story is etiological, we created this.

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Headshot

Lilah Warren

Grade: 12 / CEGEP I
Island Connected
Nanaimo, BC

“This poem was inspired by a questionnaire I had to go through to get approved for surgery. It made me think of what kind of questions one might ask to get the information they wanted through any means necessary, and what kind of questions I would like to ask myself.”

Bio

Lilah Warren is a grade 12 student who has been writing poetry since the age of five. She writes about the subconscious, memory, and female adolescence. She has strange dreams of the ocean every night.

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