I crave attention like sugar

[in_seconds]

This is the first poem I've written in years.  Actually the first poem I've written since I started college and I just graduated.  Interesting.
Well, you guys are the first to see it:

I crave attention like sugar

I crave attention like
I salivate for sugar,
like I wine for chocolate.

Like a kid on halloween
trading kit-kats for skittles
I crave color.

I seek immediate responce
like my bodies quick reaction to sweets --
A sudden blood sugar spike has
My heart rate racing within seconds.

I want like a teenager,
confused and questioned.
I thirst like an aged addict,
and I need like a child.
I'm reaching for my mothers hand
and I look up to see myself

23 years later
alone in the mirror of a drab dressing room
where I decoratively display
a scripted sexuality --
I'm Feminine in a little black dress that's
dotted with suggestive red roses.

An exhibitionist in a
heavy winter coat
I want to be seen.
I want to be

as transparent as a
jellyfish.

It's too fucking cold
to be nude
I tell myself "patience."

I tilt my head to expose my neck,
to exaggerate the shadow
cast across my collar bones.
The flesh of my bare thigh
slightly lifts the edge of the dress
as I pop my knee forward.

I crave attention
like the scream of poison ivy
craves attention,
My stark pale skin--
red and itchy.

I want glitter and words
like a drag queen and your favorite poet.
I need actions and verbs.

I'm a nudist in a catholic church,
a radical queer under veil in Iran.
I'm your youngest daughter having sex
on a dirty mattress in a musty garage,
A circus performer stuck in the dull dressing room
of the goodwill southern california
taking cheap camera phone pictures
of my image in a smudged mirror.