The Devonshire Wishing Well.

To be honest,
everything has always fucking hurt.
Like when you upturn dirt
and find a tin with no worth.
That’s me—
an item sought
but never kept.

Folded like soft felt,
forgotten in someone’s pocket.
I ask,
but no one helps.
I just want to be saved
from myself.

I’m a vision of heaven
born in hell,
meant well,
but no one’s known me still—
like a child in a well
who leaned too far
just to feel something
and fell.

I picked a number.
I know this spell.

As a kid,
I threw pennies
in the Devoshire Mall wishing well.
But I wasn’t wishing.
I was reverse panhandling—
begging for love
so humble,
so steady
that one person would be enough.
Just one.

One home.
One security blanket
to mute the chill—
the kind of cold
that settles in the bones
of a child
alone
in her own home.

So alone
in her own mind
that even writing felt asinine.
What good are words
when no one reads them,
and God stopped listening
back when I was still writing
backwards S’s,
navigating emotions alone like Tetris,
unable to write in full sentences.

But the moon had crescents
that cycled
like fences
that kept me stuck in a life
I just can't figure out.
Can’t sort it out,
can’t let it out,
can’t make it make sense.

So I stacked ‘em in tens
then started again—
a silent plea
a penny for my thoughts
at the Devonshire wishing well.