What you remember first is the first time she showed your teeth to you. You expected something less than that and it stuck. If you could have touched it, it would smeared a bit on your knuckles like honey does. The first thing they want to know is how she always knew. Well.

All the blades had been painted to match the handle. That was the first clue. She had pictured it being windowless but it was even worse than that. Pitch-black and tight like a chrysalis, superfluous in cruelty and something like a metaphor stuck to her tongue which fell not declaring anything after all. The first time passivity took over, her jaw shut tight on instinct but she had practiced relaxing it so it would first open, then pop. It would fall back into its natural stasis: that little half grin in which she bit her tongue to stop the grating and then fell into its final full relaxed half smile. The first time she showed her teeth to you, you obliged.

this next section is called: Black Cohosh,
or remind them about abortifacents
in stages and forget the women
that shamed you
for teaching women
how to kill their babies.

“Before I would have been growling, crawling up the walls from want. Now I feel only slightly empty, and fully content. ”

Eight bites, Carmen Maria Machado

“and what did you do when the construction truck cut you off?”

 
”swerved.”

magic magic clap clap clap look who got her name back.

”Artemis”

when I laugh, I feel illustrated.

 a gaze starving
usually promises
return.

And I came full at them,
hook in mouth
like hungry lure.

“Pisces”

once again, here i come
in linear order. i once wrote the story of

the plague. and im gonna tell it exactly as i saw it.

January 1, 2020

I had woken up early having gone to bed early and I sat sketching in the margins, a tree with its leaves falling, kind of dancing around an otherwise prosaic phrase
sometimes things just go away
like missing pieces

 I had no plans the night before and I had no plans today. I know you can’t just sit and listen to a clock tick but here I was, passing hours, staring at a phrase. And it ticked like that,

sometimes things just go away

“But im the eternal night writing rhymes
about wind chimes & world peace
while even in my sleep im fighting wars
that grind the enamel off my teeth.
And i wake with my jaw clenched and
my body bent thinking,
‘how many dishes have i broken this week?”

-andrea gibson