I hold anxiety in my breath like a flameless candle, burning and unburnt. The bones of my hips hold memories, chipped, melting into my womb. My fingers hold malice and death, grasping at cruelty with tips made rough by want. The long bones of my thighs hold the night we found each other. Open, unafraid. Your love exists in the skin pushed taut across … Read More paper
+ 2016, vellum, writers, writing books
It starts with a girl. It always starts with a girl. She presents herself as unafraid but she is fearful or we know or suspect that she will become so as she ages. As her innocence fades, wears thin. As the eyes of men and boys weigh upon her bones. The judgment. The lust. She meets a stranger. She is enlightened, emboldened. She learns … Read More starts
Blessing. Bless you. Blessed. God Bless. I am blessed. You are blessed. Bless. The word, in its many forms, is overused. Hashtagged. Blown into the wind like an air kiss. Tossed away. Get up off your knees and walk. Use your hands to climb, to build. My arms are open and ready to receive you. Not as a god would, but as one with … Read More blessing
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You would cry that night and it would take a long time for anyone to hear you but when she did, you mother would listen about the overdue library book and what would happen if you weren’t well enough to get to school tomorrow? What would happen? What? You never got over that library book. That you had made someone else suffer by being … Read More fireflies
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I can feel the skeleton that is me beneath my face skin. It becomes closer and clearer each day. Breaking me down into less than human. Skin and bone. Skull. There was a china cabinet and angel hair in our playroom. There was no other place to put it. It did not move with us when we moved. It must have been his mother’s. … Read More the angel hair. the tea cups. your walls. you.
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I could say that the shell is thinner than a fingernail but that would not be true. The shell is a shiver. It is a slice. It is the color of the veins beneath the skin of my wrist. The color of the veins at my son’s soft temple. The shell is cracked open and whatever was within it is now gone. The albumen. The amniotic … Read More blue, the shell, the sky, what belongs to you, what doesn’t
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Beluga swim the seaway. The river. The river I was born on. On an island. On an island in the river. The bridge crosses over into Kahnawake. The people of the flint. The keepers. Crossing over one way out and one way home. Then I was young. Then I was older. And we learned to follow Champlain. Voyageur. He chose a young wife to … Read More mortification and everything after
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The jacaranda protruding into his yard was infested with fire ants. He let his neighbor know but the dickhead would not hear of it. “Not my problem,” he said, holding up his hands as if he didn’t have a nickel to his name. Oh yeah? Not your problem? He was going to burn the fucking tree down. He’d pour gasoline around the base and toss in … Read More their rapture
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Back then, the wind blew hard over the banks, causing clusters of whiteouts along the road. We drove into ether, turning blind corners blindly. We planted bulbs every fall so we would live to see them bloom. Let us live. We had given everything up to the air until the ground would still no more. Spring pushes in from the edges, melting and freezing. The … Read More claw
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The dog races into the yard, while the birds, defying their fear, remain feeding. They know nothing of the melt. How the ice feathers down, enlightening with its touch. The dog, the birds, move over the fractured ground, knowing the cold, but not expecting what comes next. There is this moment. This one and this one.Water cycling into water into air.
myfanwy collins 