Ode to the Autistic Girls who look like Courtney Love

dark roots outgrown

on uneven toned hair

shades of blonde in yellow,

white

purple

swollen lipped and sullen eyed

all of your doll parts.

your lipstick bleeds across your whole face

we all know you are drunk

you cannot mask it

could you ever mask it?

i wish my psychiatrist

i wish my psychiatrist

was more like a mother

that i could lay on the couch

or across her lap

be listened to attentively

all while having my hair brushed

but instead

we will sit six feet apart

sinking into two large arm chairs

a table in between us

today she prescribed me vyvanse

my prozac stays at thirty milligrams

I will go home and take forty

i will see her again in three months

maybe two

maybe six

we fill the dogs pool and dip our toes in

you serve me a barbecue in my back garden

we do coke together in my sitting room until dawn

all in three days

i cannot make my anger beautiful

or my pain sweet.

i refuse to make this easier to swallow.

i am not yours to consume.

sofia hoefig is a dublin based poet

a believer in the beauty of words and that poetry can be anywhere —

most likely in the private and inebriated thoughts left sitting in the depths of your notes app, edited and rewritten a hundred times