aimeemonique

[aimeemonique]

to fathers

My first kiss A proper, slippery French one Was one of those things I did Because it is one of those things that you do We were school-hall sweaty Dressed in as not-much as possible Inappropriate bits neatly covered In pop-punk-emo-scene fluoro What I took away from my first kiss back then Was that it was wet And that he probably didn’t know what he was doing Or maybe I just didn’t know what I was doing And maybe all that tongue was just How it’s all meant to go.

What I take away from my first kiss now Is the way his friends circled me like frothing puppies Grabbing my ass when my back was turned Mates celebrating his conquest, a prize for one a prize for all. So I’m writing a curt warning To the hounds of yesteryear Because you better raise your sons better than yourselves Because we are growing a generation of girls Who will rip their prying fingers from their sockets.

[aimeemonique]

angry

I think I might be angry I suspect it’s always there, humping my heels like a small and annoying dog I think I might be trying to stuff it under my shirt, like an awkward teenage kleptomaniac at the Farmers cosmetics counter I think I might be swallowing it back down, like an embarrassing repressed burp on a first date I think I am blaming it all on the years of working customer service because I am just not a people person

Once, when I was very small, I threw a tantrum in Riccarton Mall I wanted an ice-cream now A Wendy’s ice-cream with with soft bananas and wine-gums to give it a leering grin I wanted my ice-cream now But mum said no, After Pak’n’Save.

I wonder what it felt like, to go ‘ape-shit psycho as mum said, I wonder if it felt good, like eating takeaways twice in one day I wonder if it felt freeing, like when you pee in the wilderness and it trickles down your leg a bit I wonder if it felt like a kind of release, like when you finally stop pretending to like Pulp Fiction because everyone is meant to like Pulp Fiction and mostly boys like girls who like Pulp Fiction

Last week I bought a packet of cheap disposable razors from New World And blankly sliced myself open inside a McDonalds toilet And I wonder if this is what being angry looks like When you are a twenty-three year old woman.

[aimeemonique]

young adult fiction.

I want to devour you like young adult fiction I want to consume you in one sleepless sitting In one night building slowly towards sex so monumental that my life will be forever fractured into a ‘before’ and ‘after’ It doesn’t even have to be very good sex It doesn’t even have to be sex at all It just has to be with you being with me So mutually absorbed that in one night we will build our own empire I want to devour you like young adult fiction Because I love you in that cliche way that makes everything feel like a shivering first I want to devour you like young adult fiction I want to make a bunch of very stupid decisions I want the urgency And immediacy I want to pour myself into you like the first sip of shitty spirits Let’s binge-watch you and me.

[aimeemonique]

this is where first year friendships come to die.

Aro Valley is haunted by ghosts, Stalking like stray cats Through the glass-bottle hillside. They glue themselves like blackened chewing gum To the sunless pavements, Drooling condensation into the deep pits of wind-rattled windows, Lodging their slack-jawed molars into the gently rotting floorboards.

Aro Valley whispers to me of what I was Three winters ago, when I was one part of a magnificent We. We three grand dames, sister-queens shrouded in faux furs and moth-bitten collars,

Reigning with a youthful superiority over the aching loneliness we kept as pets in our chests, Quelling its mewls with quiet reassurances that we were different and better, Stroking our restless egos to sleep with our cigarette-stained fingertips.

We’ve littered Devon Street’s treacherous curves With our own skeleton-leaf corpses, Now ground into soggy dust By the next year’s batch of still-stiff Doc Martens.

I clutched to these best friends, this stolen bouquet of women, Too sharp and tentative to blossom. I tried to colour myself with the leftover paint Of Dahlia’s dark mystery, tried to steal her slim, effortless fingers As they rolled old Equadorian tobacco under yellow-lamplight. I tried to restructure my skeleton to imitate Camelia’s staunch strength, tried to mimic the dangerous glint Of her eyebrow piercing as it raised in disdain. I made these women my mirrors and we Bottled each others secrets in the middle of the damp night.

We expired here, in the collarbone of this valley, Our bodies separating from one another’s like tired milk.