Valentines: “would you fuck your clone (y/n)” by Katie Mansfield

would you fuck your clone (y/n)

in high school on ask.fm someone submitted 
“would u date urself” to my inbox & me
who had been called bitch & annoying & spent a year doing
some boy’s math homework said: “probably not, I’d be a handful” well
5 years later all my best friends are obsessed with my boobs
& I would like to go on record to revise:

yes I would date myself not only would I date myself
I would make sweet love to her bite the spot on her neck
that makes her eyes roll back I would let her cook
the same balsamic mushroom pasta for every date night & I’d wear
every lopsided bucket hat she sews let her be a brat with too many opinions
on marvel movies & not enough thoughts on which stocks we should add
to our investment portfolio, we’d seduce men into doing our taxes
& then I would give her the best head of her life

did I mention great boobs 
that baby blue balconette bra 
did I mention her laugh is like rainforest café 
like the thunderous magic of the best birthday party you attended
in the third grade

& when the gray days come we’ll practice coexisting same as how we live
with the spider in the corner of our apartment – 
nervy but never enough to want to end it all – 
yes I would fuck my clone, pull her hair 
‘til she writhes & her onion-sweat-stench curdles our sheets 
& the cat’s litter box overflows & all the tomatoes we won’t eat wither on the vine 
& I pile pillows between us to hold space for the too much
it is too much

thank god

it is too much

About Katie Mansfield

Katie Mansfield is a Vietnamese American (she/her) poet who likes blending the poignant with the slightly profane (as an alumna of Stanford’s Spoken Word Collective, past YouTube hits have included “thirst poem” and “dick appointment as the job you didn’t get”). In her work, she seeks to make all her humor heartfelt so that it approaches a place of healing, and she is interested in, as Chen Chen once wrote in a tweet, “the powers of sweetness.” Follow her on instagram @sprinklek or contribute to her fledgling Twitter presence @mansfieldnotes