After My Son and I Decide Which Selfie

makes me look skinny, I launch my botched ass body
across the algorithms #FilterFree. I know Frost meant
exactly this branch, this road. But I only understand
how to love indiscriminately, how to angle the pathetic
prop of a body that used to be. When did you decide to go
gray? a friend asks, daquiri casually. And I get angry
because this is not in my Sex in the City script
– never mind the absence of sex or city necessary
to the premise –You mean these blond streaks? I insist.
Maybe that’s why the Flying Fairy Dolls from the 90s
haunt my dreams, the kind which launch from pink
plastic sticks, only to capsize, their wings like two limp
dicks. Honestly, how long do you have to be adrift
to call it flight? See, every time I think I’ve landed:
boom pop! I’m sky shot, and the clouds never
remember my scream or my lips. And if, like Frost,
this is where I pivot, I’ll arrive ribbon-stripped,
sans package, a Flying Fairy who only haunts
long enough to cast her fall as magic.

Poem in Which Touch is a Theory

My son doesn’t believe in the multiverse.
When asked? Math.

I get it. Numbers lose their wonder
after a certain digit. The human mind

not capable of anything vast so it blurs
garden to green ash.

I too will lose value

will bilge past grasp. So, it makes sense

when, from the depths of ex, I get a text:
I’ve been thinking about your throat all day.

Oh hush. I’ve studied Jean Kilbourne too.
I do know better than to sliver

my identity into body
parts best used to breathe

but a bitch learns to be a bitch
on her knees

and I am desperate for a way to feel
angry.

My son used to want to count forever.

Just because one could.
Just because numbers exist long enough
to hold them in your mouth.

Now he thinks the world only happens
once.

So how can I still believe in possibility
still wonder if you will take off

my necklace still guess if you will let

the sapphires meteor your counter
or if you’ll shatter the clasp and cloak

the voice everyone past tried to choke?

Alexa Doran is the author of Exit Interview, forthcoming in 2026 from Galileo Press, as well as of the award-winning collection DM Me, Mother Darling (Bauhan 2021), and of the chapbook Nightsink, Faucet Me a Lullaby (Bottlecap Press 2019). She currently works as an Assistant Professor English at Tallahassee State College and reads fiction and creative non-fiction for CRAFT and Master’s Review. For a full list of her publications, awards, and interviews please visit her website at alexadoran.com.