CW: self-harm, sexual assault, suggestion of eating disorder

Our hands are full of motherhood, the raw threads making up 

the template has not changed. This face ate at this shop once,

and my arm was once my older sister. She was too old

too soon before I even knew we have the same

story, the one about a man sliding his tentacle 

on a rock. Me, I pretended to be a door handle,

concocted an ocean in my cochlea until it passed. 

I believed I was a witch, mixing cut grass and dead ants

in shampoo. When the moon broke water 

for my age, I was wearing shorts for the first time.

Bloody between my thighs, I tucked my tummy

into a pill capsule. That was the nauseous beginning

anyway. That night, I ran into an empty grass 

clearing to empty my body once and for all.

Funny how some things your mother just don’t teach, 

like how to stay skinny. Or that it takes just one day to

make a woman against her will, a thousand more days

to sculpt her. She has to be browned and glazed. 

Admit, you are the master ceramist yourself. You have lessons

you kept untold: why you never make the first move,

how you improvise a weapon, or who taught you

to hide where. Maybe it was all made up, everything

you said, everything I said. You who laugh behind 

the fence. You. You who was I. You who said you who.

Originally published in Stone of Madness Press Issue 6