Works by K. Mullins

Dec 4, 2019

Kelly Mullins is an unpublished American writer living in Amsterdam. She works in the tech industry and someday hopes to ditch the algorithms for full-time poetry writing.

New York forever

I was the type of person
To whom everything
Seemed obvious
He said
From the side of his bed
As I sat flattered
In hindsight
The whole thing
Obviously wasn’t obvious
To me trying to blend in
In all black
To the New York backdrop
With young red lips
Afraid to order
Foreign red wines
Stood out against white walls
In the temporary TriBeCa studio
Of the thirty-something tech exec
Who totally had his life together
Tried to act in the know
When he set the mood
With “Spotify”
A new thing on which to play
His musical musings
Or when he ordered
To get rid of me
An “Uber”
The black chariot of pride and shame
I´d come to know well
New things were his thing
Apps, companies, interns
And I remember the inside
Of that apartment
But not much else
The lush glass lobby
Lights from other buildings
Blinking through the blinds
Hanging over the toilet
Swishing Listerine
Coughing on the knockoff
Eames
Dried out so badly
From my first joint
That when he kissed me I
Disintegrated but stayed
Woke up wrapped in white sheets
With too expensive whiskey
Evaporating into me inhibiting
My ability to speak for myself
Missed my shift at the shitty retail job
Told no one of my whereabouts
For years thought
I was special enough
To skirt my own rules
Only now knowing
From across the Hudson
And over the Atlantic
In the glaring lights
Of my own
White walled apartment
Which of those rules
Obviously
Weren’t written by me

Behavior, Impact, Options

I had stayed up all night
Rehearsing every word for you
Trying to prevent the possibility
Of being overtaken by my soliloquy
In the moment

So I could let go of you
Like a stray balloon

And when the time came,
(At a Starbucks of all places)
I was enraged that you
Had delivered me
A monologue too

Pop Astrology

My horoscope says
I cannot stay home and hope the love of my life will knock on my door

My horoscope says
I am threatened by emotions because I cannot control or rationalize them

My horoscope says
You hate me

My horoscope says
My happiness is tied to my freedom

My horoscope says
The older I get, the younger I’ll feel

My horoscope says
I need a partner who’s able to accept my intensity

My horoscope says
Not to charge my crystals under the full moon

My horoscope says
What I need from a relationship is often at odds with the type of person I’m drawn to

My horoscope says
Foreign men are stimulating in a slightly provocative way to me

My astrologer says
When I’m eighty, I’ll still wonder if you were a prince or if you were a frog

My tarot reader says
I will rule the kingdom alone and you will come back to test me

My gynecologist says
The HPV will eventually go away

My parents say
I worry too much

My friends say
I’m the most self-assured person they know

My therapist says
Just kidding, I don’t have a therapist

From the Editor:

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