Sosie Chery

NOT U NOR HIM 2 PARADISE

you are in ohio before the end of the world, KN-95 
emblazoned with TRUE LOVE WAITS in rhinestones. 
it’s hot biohazard summer and you want to be scoured
in every sense of the word: pored over by doctors, told
exactly what’s wrong and how to eliminate it as quickly 
and painfully as possible. you want to be excoriated, 
but all the doctors in ohio before the end of the world
have better things to do, so you settle for staring into the sun,
heart-shaped sunglasses popped onto your forehead, 
calculating how much each breath pollutes the air.
it’s hot ground-level ozone summer and the sun is a nuclear
beauty queen, the biggest, meanest maraschino cherry
in god’s great vat of grenadine. Pure? What does it mean? 
asks plath. you drink a bottle of red 40, read the poem again: 
the sin, the sin, she says, but everything’s a sin, 
like everything’s a carcinogen, like happiness is a smash-and-grab: 
fistfuls of broken glass that may as well be diamonds. 
you die or you buy in. The sin. The sin.