Poetry: The Last Known Picked-Up Girl

The Last Known Picked-Up Girl

my life was so small and petty it dropped
into a jar with barely a whisper;
a slip to say where i’d gone wrong
from the wound man doom-man
out in the world making hay
from girls like me

i’d ask him to tell me what it felt like
to live as long as he does;
have girls too, get married, go to school
he doesn’t know how many any more
i won’t ask him how many now

i would ask him to hold my mother