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  • Writer's pictureNeon Mariposa Magazine

Two Poems by Meeah Williams

What Happened to All the Unicorns?

I’m a good girl.

I do my homework.

I assiduously read the comment section

of every transgender story I find online

before I leave the house


I splay my fingers on the kitchen table

& wait for my nails to dry

& get my daily

dose of tough love from the experts

who are kind enough to inform me

that I’d better be extra careful walking

their streets

under their sun

under their moon


that I’d best consider well at whom I smile

in their restaurants

their bars

their parks

their supermarkets

their bathrooms

that I have a lot

of secrets no one wants to know

& I’d best protect them with my life


They inform me that God

doesn’t make mistakes

& doesn’t make people like me

that I’d do best in the meantime

to answer to whatever name they’ve given me

because my birth certificate knows me

better than I do myself that my DNA

cannot be changed to form the word “woman”

no matter how tortuously

I rearrange the letters


Every morning they remind me that I don’t

exist & if I still insist they just might have to

beat me to death to prove it

& I’ll deserve it


They remind me that you can’t

just go around thinking you’re a unicorn

& not expect trouble & as proof they ask

how many unicorns do you see anyway

& I’m not sure whether I dare to tell them

that I see them everywhere

they’re all around us

there are more of us than they’ll ever know.



Girl in Flesh-Colored Space Suit


I’ve tried to make myself small

to inverse my existence

into a fold like an empty pocket

so you wouldn’t have to see me

reach in and find me

I am not a piece of candy for you to suck

the color off of

I hid my face behind the world’s biggest sunglasses

because you said the sun shouldn’t shine

on filth like me

I made my face blank as an astronaut’s helmet

because this was an alien planet I traversed

The atmosphere did not sustain me

I am not a black birthday cake

with all the candles already blown out

I did not get to make my own death wish

I walked nearly weightless passed

Barnes & Noble, Payless Shoes, Mad Cow Yarn

I did not stop at Pinkberry’s to get a frozen yogurt

I did not walk into Menchie’s like a hobo

I did not pass go

I did not collect $200

I didn’t want to wake up this morning

but my dreams would no longer have me

I was pulled from my bed like a breach birth

by something bigger than myself

I didn’t want to live in this world

but I was provided a ticket to no other

How much of myself need I erase

so as not to offend you?

I feel almost as small as I can possibly be already

I feel like the period at the end of a sentence

I feel like I’m getting denser & denser

I feel like I may be coming back

in spite of myself

coming back more emphatically than ever

I’m growing into an exclamation mark

I’m sorry

I’m sorry

I tried to take myself off the board

when I couldn’t find a token that looked like me

I am as surprised as anyone

to see myself still in the mirror come morning

I no longer believe in a point of no return

I just believe in the return

I fear the only thing I had to fear was your fear

I fear

I fear

I was never as weak as I thought

Instead I feared what you feared

my own strength

It was your fear I felt, here, take it back, own it

I’ve taken it as far as I can go

It’s too heavy for me anymore

I was never afraid of myself

You were afraid of me

I was never afraid of this world

You were afraid of this world with me in it

I take off my helmet and take a deep breath

This atmosphere suits me just fine

Look how I step, so lightly, leaping great distances as if weightless

leaping from old life to new

leaving you behind

This world was always mine

You can bury me wherever you like

I won’t leave

I’ll always rise out of the ground

I am not your worst nightmare

Wake up

I was always the best friend I never had


Meeah Williams’s work has appeared in Otoliths, Phantom Drift, Uut, The Conium Review, Petrichor, Skin to Skin, Wilde, The Milo Review, Meat for Tea, Angry Old Man, The Ginger Collect, Former Cactus, Anti-Heroin Chic and others. She lives in Seattle, sews creepy “ugly” dolls,  and tweets at pussy_nagasaki@pussynagaski


#poetry #issue1 #MeeahWilliams

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