For Ren

This is how to close your heart
up tight like a fist. Desire is a hot
spike through the chest and 

you’ve only just learned what it
is to want someone so badly that
you need a new name for what

you feel. I promise that it is not
always like this. Not everyone you
meet is unattainable, but we’re 

young, and the number of times
that someone tells you no is going
to outnumber how many times 

they say yes. Learn how to be
lonely. Learn what it’s like to know
that you are coming home to 

yourself night after night—
that empty is just another word
for open. 

railrose:

When I was five, my mother
carried an unborn child
in the back of her throat and

I still swallow heartburn
whenever she brings it up.

I don’t know how many weeks it
takes for a growth to become a soul but
sometimes I think my mother’s heart

still bears the weight of two.

reminders:

• using your body means loving your body
• use your body more
• love your body more 

You were twelve. When you woke
up the night after your mother told

you about the birds and the bees,
you thought the universe was playing 

a joke on you. Your sheets looked 
like a crime scene. You searched 

with your fingers for the source of
all that wet and found it between your

thighs, that place where you never
ventured to go besides on the dare

with the boy who lives across the
street. You swallowed shame

when you showed your mother the 
mess you made in the bed. She gave

you a heating pad for your cramps
and two ibuprofen. After—

always after, when the backaches 
stop and the bloated, engorged 

feeling of excess leaves, you finally
un-clench your thighs. You unlock,

swing open. There is a feeling of 
freedom, of flight. 

It is going to be painful and slow,
like ripping off a Band-Aid or telling
yourself the truth: that he doesn’t
love you, that maybe he never did,

that he left to save himself and you
are the piece of furniture that wasn’t
pretty enough to be taken with when
he moved out in the spring. The

smell of gardenias makes you want
to vomit now. The minute after he 
left, you pulled each bud up by its
roots and tossed them into the 

neighbor’s yard. You expected an
angry phone call about the uprooted
flowers, but it never came. Instead,
his face. The memory of his mouth

slinking in under the door after you
turned the lights off. You dreamed
of his hands around your throat, 
told him to press harder right before

you woke up. You begin to turn
inwards, begin to lose count of how
many showers you take in the dark.
Hair, soap, skin—everything gets

washed down the drain. The first 
time you leave a drunk voicemail
you’re sure he’ll be able to smell
the wine on your breath. The second

time, you eat a stick of gum and call
it dinner. His name sounds different
when you slur out all the syllables,
less sacred somehow; not like you

are praying, but like you are dancing
naked as fast as you can on top of it.
After, you lay in bed and draw lines on
your skin to remind yourself of your

edges. He is not allowed through them. 

A good friend lent me Warsan Shire’s Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth and I’m currently drowning in it.

Expect them to be at weddings,
school events, marathons, the 
obstetrics ward at the hospital
waiting silently for the right

moment, the bloody swirl of a
newborn’s head crowning. They
are hidden in all kinds of places—
under tongues, in

someone’s pocket, beneath a
car seat. Somewhere in Boston,
someone is wailing over the
death of their eight year-old

child. How can we look ourselves
in the mirror and believe that we
are good? How many more times
are we going to ask how someone

is capable of doing something like
this? A wrong step, maybe a glance,
maybe nothing at all, maybe a
word or a sigh, maybe we are all

bombs, maybe we are all ticking
and filling the world full with all of our
noise. Somewhere in Boston,
someone is wailing over the death

of their eight year-old child.

I’ve been pulling on this electric cigarette
for hours, the sweet taste of nicotine tickling
the back of my throat. I admire myself in the 
mirror as I let it dangle between my fingers
like an extra limb. I sit out on the window
ledge and watch as neighborhood boys chase
each other, shirtless, on their bikes. I let my
hair down and feel like Rapunzel. I look like 
a summer storm in my dress, feet hanging bare
out of the window. I flick pretend ash onto the
pavement below. Downstairs my father is 
watching a documentary about lions. As the
narrator waxes on about its predatory skills,
I realize that I always sympathize with the 
hunted. 

sierrademulder:

My body fills                 and fills                  like a tumbler
of lemonade           poured by God.               I am
a hundred light            bulbs burning             out.
I am your           favorite dessert.            I am opening
and opening          and I feel as though          I cannot
open anymore or           my legs          would surely grow
flowers                  from the back of my           knees.
I am overflowing          the bathtub.           I am spilling
spilling                              spilling                   clean.

- Sierra DeMulder