I should be doing homework

but I can hear my brother and his cadre

of losers, shouts and laughter rising

through the floor. I am conscious then

of what is below me and it makes me think

of what is above me, and when I think

of what is above me, I think

of Blake Felipe.

I’m not obsessed with her—if I’m obsessed

with anything, it’s the architecture of a Good Girl—

and I cruise her Instagram

studying the way her boyfriend laces his fingers

around her belly, the way her smile is the same

in photo after photo, like every day is ctrl + c

ctrl + p-erfect.

Her hands clasp his and she wears a ring

like Sarah’s and I wonder if she prays

if she carries heaven in her pocket, and if

she ever slips the silver over her knuckle

and her underwear down over her knees,

taking everything off, even the plaster smile.

I wonder if she ever touches herself in the dark,

if she’s ever cheated on her four-year boyfriend

just to see, just to taste another person’s sweat,

to watch her lucky-penny hair sweep over their chest.

I know she has not. These are all the ways we are different.

These are all the ways that she is gold and I am rust.

And I could blame the Colonel—and for some things, I do—

but when my phone’s screen goes to sleep I think again

of the doorway I inched open, the box whose lid I cracked,

how everything that slithers through is my doing.

In the dark my breath hisses like a serpent.