I am going to build you an island and you are going to love it.
I am going to carve your face into a mountain.
I am going to buy you a present. It is a cat
and you are going to love it
or it will die and that will be all your fault
and you’ll feel terrible
and feeling terrible is really inconvenient. When you feel terrible
the bandits come and they live in your closet and at night
while you sleep they shoot you in the face and set your children on fire
and then they cut the skin off of everything you ever loved
and they nail it to your door in the shape of your sadness.

***

Sasha Fletcher is the author of the forthcoming poetry book it is going to be a good year (Big Lucks Books, 2015)), one novella, and several chapbooks of poetry (including dear gloria, dear madeline, dear siobhan, dear ethel, dear eloise, dear wendy, dear becky, dear lisa, dear liza, dear michelle, dear tamika, dear tanya, tonight (Big Lucks Books, 2014)). 

“this is why we can’t have nice things” originally appeared in Bodega Magazine‘s Issue 2.