If you disappear then I

cut mangoes for one at midnight. Just because
I can. I’ll garden in a lacy blue thong, rip cactus
spines out of my index finger & scatter them
across the oak vanity. Stargaze & watch
a Bob Dylan documentary, one from the sixties,
on a broken projector with too-salty popcorn.
Cry alone, because if you disappear,
I’ll disappear too. I am not poems about
devotion. I got in an elevator for the first time
the other day, grabbed at my disposable mask,
dropped it on the dirty floor littered with
McDonalds cups. There was a mirror, a
cracked one, on the other wall, with a painting
of Salvador Dali. I didn’t recognize my
reflection, backed up & brushed my hand
over the buttons, pressing all of them, ducked
down to the floor, then I, too, disappear—

Ashley Hajimirsadeghi’s work has appeared in Into the Void Magazine, Mud Season Review, Rust + Moth, and The Shore, among others. She currently reads for Mud Season Review and EX/POST Magazine, is the Playwriting Director’s Apprentice at New Perspectives Theatre Company, and was a Brooklyn Poets Fellow. cartography of trauma, her debut chapbook, is forthcoming from dancing girl press. Her website is http://ashleyhajimirsadeghi.squarespace.com/