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

I think a lot about that whale who
sings in a pitch that no other
whales can understand. Maybe

they’re just too tired to sing back,
or maybe they know the truth: 
that love is an onslaught, that it

smashes into you like an iceberg
and it doesn’t matter if you’re
built like a ship—you’ll go down

anyway, bow first, break in half
like the Titanic and crash into the
ocean floor, miles apart. You’ll

rust long before you’re able to
pull yourself back together again
and it will take years for future 

lovers to find your exact
coordinates and bring what’s left
up to the surface, to the sun.

I am already selfish enough for
wishing my body was something 
different, something other. 

It is easier to love you this way
knowing that I can’t have you, that
I’m not the only one who doesn’t

have anyone to come home to.
You think no one notices how you
look at him but when I come

away from you I am sunburned.
Yours is the kind of desire that 
scorches. I shower in the dark

to avoid all traces of you. I am
trying to be kinder to myself but I
am still a work in progress, a 

lighthouse for the lost.

you will read these poems that I have
written and see what I have seen in you.
You will know how I’ve lusted after you,

the whole sweet ripe otherness of you,
will know that I have written pages and
pages dedicated to the way your mouth 

curves when you hear a joke you don’t
particularly care for. You will know that I
write about you always, that even when

you were busy memorizing someone
else’s spine I was dedicating poems about
the seasons to you. One day I will come

to you and hand every single poem 
where you’ve crept between the stanzas
over and it will all make sense. 

There can’t be anything more romantic
than the life of a cicada. There is a certain
breed that stays burrowed underground
for eighteen years. Eighteen years. Think
of all of those Christmases and birthdays
and Halloweens spent buried deeply in the
ground, waiting patiently for the soil to
ripen to just the right temperature before
sprouting up like flowers. They are hungry 
for love, cicadas, will sing until whole cities
are humming with their sonnets, their top
40 hits, waiting for the perfect mate so that
they can burrow back into the ground for
another eighteen years. We count the days
with the kind of patience we reserve for
children at the playground. We use socks,
towels, old t-shirts as insulation in our 
windows and doors, preparing ourselves
for the onslaught. When it comes, we are
still surprised. We sleep with earplugs.
We turn the volume up on our televisions,
radios. We forget that love is not always
quiet. That what is labeled as noisy to us 
is the sound of love to another cicada. 

he taught me how to ride a bike for
the first time. I was nervous from the
understanding that I was too old to

try to learn how to do this now, but he
was patient. There were children at
the playground who stared at us as I
gripped the handlebars too tightly. His

hands were the training wheels and
when they fell away all I could think 
about was making it to the wide span

of his arms as he stood waiting for 
me to peddle back to him. It took a
bruising to both knees and an elbow 

to learn that he would wait for me no
matter what kind of shape I was in
when I returned. This is how I love

your son: in bicycles, in long stretches
of summer heat, in the drive back to
his house where we take turns studying 

each other’s knees scrupulously under 
the soft light of a setting sun. The first 
cry belongs to the cicadas. The second 

is entirely our own. 

sierrademulder:

 
Vitamin D. Sunlight. Go
outside. Get a good night

of sleep. Not too good.

Not shades drawn forever
good. Not like you used to.

Open the windows.

Buy more houseplants.
Breathe. Meditate. (One day,

you will no longer be

afraid of being alone
with your thoughts.)

Exercise. Actually exercise

instead of just googling it.
Eat well. Cook for yourself.

Organize your closet, the

garage. Drink plenty of water
and repeat after me:

I am not a problem

to be solved. Repeat after me:
I am worthy I am worthy I am

neither the mistake nor

the punishment. Forget to take
vitamins. Let the houseplant die.

Eat spoonfuls of peanut butter.

Shave your head. Forget
this poem. It doesn’t matter—

there is no wrong way

to remember the grace of your
own body; no choice

that can unmake itself.

There is only now, here,
look: you are already

forgiven.

- Sierra DeMulder

You think that it must be spring
with the way he leaves a bouquet of
flowers just beneath your ribs. You

finger the tiny blooms, give them 
names like ‘carnation’, ‘tulip’, ‘lily’ 
and ‘daisy.’ You find yourself 

stuck between the velvet blue
of new bruise and the jaundiced
yellow of healing skin. You feel
like a field of dandelions. A weed

pretending to be a flower. Yours 
is a body that is no longer a body
but a reward he gets to cash in
when he tells you that he loves 
you. That he won’t ever do it 

again. You didn’t know spring
could be so brutal. You look for
the sun in his knuckles.