Online Dating Girl Jon Hillenbrand, June 21, 2012December 30, 2015 An open poem to the online dating girl You are showered by messages From every perverted minnow Nibbling at your fingers Like sperm at the shell Of an unperturbed egg. I imagine your ten sets of eyes Gazing my way across a library Or bar Or quad Or hiking trip Or airport Or foreign country To be gobbled up by me And exploded out of my heart Into ten sets of diamonds Sent up to the sky To brighten my nights. You are the unattainable goddess You always thought you could be Never to be attained with your One strike policy. I tap on the glass of your aquarium As you recline on your hot rock. The thousands of perverted minnows Nibbling at your fingers. Ten flashes of you from one To seven years ago. One from the bar with your favorite up drink… One of you holding your infant niece… One of you with your best gay male friend Who is coddling your breasts in a way I never would… One of you in Swaziland helping strangers reap that one plant… One of you with your attractive sister who is married… One of you at a Cubs game with your Cubs shirt and your Cubs hat… One of you in bed asleep with your awake arm taking your picture… One of you before a night out dressed in slinky black Showing me the back of your phone… One of you maybe naked, or at least topless or with a strapless dress, I’m not sure what’s going on there… One of you with your coffee and book or friends and drinks Or sweater and Ireland or gown and harshly cropped out male friend That you are obviously in love with at the time. All of you happy, clearly not needing a man or anything else from me Despite the undercurrent beneath the hopeful nirvana you’ve self-described. I ping you something clever An iridescent coin beneath the waves An otherwise brilliant piece of prose A rose in a field of sunflowers Never to be read due to your policy Of Select All…Delete to the last 100 messages You have not had time to read In the last week due to work Or drinking with friends Or traveling to Ireland Or helping the Swazis Or hanging with your hot married sister Or being naked Or flirting with your gay BFF Or putting on makeup before a night out Or going to a Cubs game Or sleeping Or cropping out exes Or drinking coffee and reading Without me. Poetry confusiondatinglanguagelossloveonline datingphotographypoempoemsPoetryrelationshipswomen
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