An Ode to the Recent Tableau of You Two
I can’t see her anymore,
I can’t look at her pictures because she’s happy without me.
She’s in a relationship with someone else better.
I want to say her name.
I want to taste her name on my tongue in between my lips again.
I want to talk about her all day.
But I know I can’t, if I do I’ll lose myself even more.
In my moments of silence I am wrestling with this thing
in my throat that wants me say her name over and over again.
I am trying to have the slightest control over it.
When that urge arises from the back of my throat,
I have taught myself to swallow it back down
so that I may continue to live in a moment of silence.
I can’t have her on my tongue anymore but
when thoughts of her flood and
attempt to destroy this house I have built,
I still feel pleasure,
like her destruction is desired and possibly asked for.
When I swallow the words revolving around her,
they retreat to the pit of my existence where
I taste their perfume rather than their flesh.
This is how I live and exist.
Until I find another muse.
MYKA GREENE
College of Arts & Sciences
Class of 2022, English, Creative Writing concentration
Drama minor
Myka is a writer, poet, and filmmaker who was born and raised in Richmond, Va.. In 2019, she began writing her first book, entitled Sanity Slip Songs, a collection of personal prose and poetry from the ages of fourteen to nineteen. With this, she attempts to confront the barriers between her identity and art production and has found sanction in the writings of Miranda July, Otessa Moshfegh, K-Ming Chang, Roxanne Gay, and Carmen Maria Machado. Her prose and poetry has been published in Iris Mag, Cut x Sewn Magazine, the feminist online journal That's What She Said, and the online zine Plasma Dolphin. Along with writing, she is a filmmaker and has been writing and directing short films through Filmmakers Society on Grounds and through a Richmond-based production company called HOMA Pictures. This past summer she worked as a Production Designer for Micah Watson's (UVA Class of '18) web series, “Black Enough.”
