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Origin Story
by Jenny Xie

I was profligate
like a floodlight to the sun.

Hoarded saccharine and toothmarks,
wanted only the thickest rhymes,
two of each.

Full I was of promises
I never intended to keep:
puckered laughter, lines to feast.

I let everyone who entered my life
enter through me.
Demanded nonsense love
and bodies that would ring.

Not to mention higher kilowatts
of creeping joy,
more red in everything―

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