April 2

"The Virginity Tree"
trigger warning: sexual assault

Prologue.
Andrea Gibson said to write the hardest poem.

One.
There are too many bruises in the word that does not belong between my legs.
It is four letters too many
which is to say it is four letters more than silence.
It is not a word that girls can give to other girls.

Two.
There is a tree that I can see from my room.
It’s heavy with shoes tied to its fingers as
reminders of what it means to be barefoot,
to be naked and touching for the first time.
It’s a tradition where I live:
you lose your shoes along with your virginity,
hang the pair in the tree.

Three.
Sometimes I imagine that I can erect fences around sections of my body,
miniature white picket spines designating parts of me as private property.
That is new; I used to imagine my body as a body.

Four.
There is a reason I remove my shoes every time I arrive somewhere new.
It’s the same reason I trust forests more than pickup lines.

Five.
My mother is a survivor,
a word she pronounces “victim”
and which she thinks pronounces her different,
even though the statistic is one in six.
One in six.

Six.
What is the meaning of the word legacy?

Seven.
I cannot bring myself to hang my sneakers –
the faded ones with rainbow laces and peeling heels –
in a tree so clamorous with happiness.
They would make terrible wind chimes.

Eight.
When the Womyn’s Center on my college campus strings the dirty laundry
of women’s shelter stories on a clothesline and calls it Take Back the Night art therapy
there is not a t-shirt there that fits me;
there is a man behind every curtain,
between every line.

Nine.
Her fingers knew the words crime,
No,
And Stop,
but she thinks her fingers can’t count.

Ten.
I called her “girlfriend” after that night,
called it a rite of passage
instead of wrong,
didn’t file a report because it took me three years
to even realize anything had been stolen
and not given freely.

Epilogue.
I still have not told my mother exactly how
precisely
I have filled her shoes.

April 1

"love letter to my body"
trigger warning: body issues, eating disorder

Dear body,
I have not always been the most faithful.
I have loved the Indianas of other women’s bellies
and the Appalachians of their ilia.
I have imagined their tiny clementine breasts in place
of your heirloom melons. I have
accused your hands of the crime of
being too wise –
I’m sorry for that.
I have treated you less like a temple
and more like a temptation
to call my skin sin.
From my father I received my nose
hairs,
doll-size ears,
and knees on rusty hinges;
from my mother,
feet that like to run,
myopia,
and the trichotillomania that compels me to
pothole my face
into a road so ragged it is difficult to
reach the destination of my eyes
without getting stuck along the way.

Dear body,
do you remember when Alex’s mom
used to call me Skinny Minnie and
you stood tall as birthday balloons
like you had accomplished something
simply by existing?
Remember when, three years later,
Mom said “chubby”
and you deflated like you had failed?
I know we have a grab bag history:
our handshakes with anorexia
(never a closer relationship) giving way to
our barnacle-knuckled grip
on body positivity.
I learned how to read a scale before
I learned how to take my own
pulse.
I have loved you loudly,
but sometimes those who love their
bodies loudest still believe they would
love their bodies louder if their bellies grew
perpendicular to gravity.

Dear body,
you have transformed paper into art,
bicycles into vehicles,
and rum into kisses and
impossible amounts of urine –
and people say you’re not magic?
you are not a temple –
you are the prayers that fill it.

Dear body,
I think you should know that
I did not learn to love the Venus curve of my belly
until I saw it shining on the
hip bone horizons of other girls.
I know that’s not how it’s supposed to work –
you’re supposed to love yourself before you’re capable
of loving others –
but
the human heart is capable of firehosing blood for 30 feet
just imagine how far love could travel
if you aimed it right
and what it could do
reflected in the mirrors of other people’s arms.