in defense of all my bitches

if u wanna love anyone u oughta develop a healthy sense of vengeance & be ready to summon every schoolyard obscenity & commit acts of arson and property damage and treason & learn to run without getting caught love oughta make u as cruel as the second-worst thing ever done to u love oughta give u the rage of a 00’s country music video or the rage of your mother red-handed in the kitchen or the rage of Noah’s wife down in the hull of the ship with the animals God bothered to name if u wanna love someone u oughta get good at using your hands because life plays dirty & will absolutely find u in any and every empty parking lot & invite u to a knife fight to which it will bring a gun anyway please be a massive bitch for love the kind that people stare at but never mess with please be the cunt your older cousin warned u no one would like because u oughta be meaner than whatever is trying to kill your loved one & i’m sorry because it’s coming, even now, with your hair still damp and fresh from the shower which u will deep-clean tomorrow, promise, while your loved one leaves the coffee percolating too long in the kitchen, even now it’s coming, and it’s bad, and i’m sorry, but however bad it is u must be worse. 

*

Katrina Agbayani is a former editor with Acta Victoriana and La Mosaic. Her work has been published, or is forthcoming, in SAND, Capsule Stories, Kitchen Table Quarterly, the UC Review, and elsewhere.