and I don’t like gristle in my meat

 

if you’re taking the time

to scrape the flesh from the bone,

do it properly

do it clean

I like mine bloody

and lean

 

I don’t like bits of bone

mixed in with someone’s ashes

in their stainless steel cup;

if I wanted their skeleton,

I would have buried the son-of-a-bitch

and waited for a night with a blood-red moon

to dig them up

 

and I don’t like empty threats

from textbook psychopaths

with nothing better to do—

your poor excuse of a knife

will hardly be enough to end MY life;

it takes a lot more than a rusty switchblade

to take me down

 

I’ve got more lives than a goddamn cat

and although I have an insatiable need

to bleed,

you’re hardly the one

that can take me there

 

I’m definitely set in my ways,

beyond any conceivable reason or fact

I guess I’m just a stubborn bitch

with a hell of an itch to scratch

By Cynthia Ruth Lewis