by Dawn Lanuza
She went to the river and called herself new, scrubbed off the drying blood from her skin, and warded off the ghost of the girl she once knew.
Before she closed the casket, she told the girl, “I would never be like you.”
Never again.
She’s got a new name. A new face. A new life. She’s out here to get you.
45
Culprits don’t deserve
recognition to make a point
about survival.
— Never thank them for your strength
46
We’ve come to the portion of the night where you slather yourself with the words “You’re not good enough.” You don’t know where it came from. Earlier, you were sure you’d done things right, and you even came home satisfied, but somehow, at night, the words keep coming up. “You’re not good enough.” You manage to sleep through it, after fighting it off and your need to further self-destruct. Some days are just like this. You do well, and then you don’t. You wake up like you’ve gone through a battle, and isn’t it the truth? You wrestle with your doubts and sleep with the demon clutching at your heart, because tomorrow is another day to prove to yourself: you are.
47
Sadness comes home,
fixes himself a drink,
sits in my living room.
Sadness used to be a visitor;
I, a reluctant host.
A friend, an enemy,
sadness knows no boundaries.
Sadness wears a robe,
mocks me as I knew it all along.
Sadness never leaves.
Sadness is where I live.
Sadness welcomes me home,
motions me to close the door.
Sadness stays,
keeps me captive for days.
Sadness lives within.
Sadness is where I live.
48
We dress pain pretty,
package it nicely,
hand it over to your hands.
The truth is what you have
in your hands—
however rough,
however delicate—
is us.
In pieces,
vignettes.
With images
that we choose to reveal
as much as conceal.
Please take care of us.
49
She’s been thinking about the dress she’d wear on her wedding day when she started wearing them. At fourteen, when she was asked to put makeup on. They shaved her eyebrows and painted her new ones.
It was the summer, which meant no school. No one would see how different she looked.
She grew.
She noticed.
There’s a fully beaded gown waiting to hug her body; doesn’t matter if they haven’t been acquainted before. They were sure it would fit, because she is tiny, and at this age, she learned a dangerous lie that was passed on like it was the truth:
tiny is an easier fix than big.
At fourteen, she was pretty much skin and bones, but she had bumps where it mattered the most. The boys at school started talking about whose shirt buttons tended to pop open. She hated hearing them talk about it, how they forgot the fact that the girl had a face and a name. To them, she was just her breasts.
Yet she also found herself looking down, questioning her worth over a body part.
There were pins pricking her sides when they pulled the dress back. They sucked her in to make her look svelte and a whole lot more grown-up. Then again, Juliet married Romeo at this age. Maybe she wasn’t that young.
She told them it hurt, and they tried to fix it, but it was still there. A phantom needle poking her when she took a breath. She said it’s fine, anyway, ’cause what’s a prick? What’s a tiny needle going to do with the rest of her body?
And she didn’t want to be known as the prickly one: difficult, complains a lot. ’Cause as much as everything in the room was overwhelming, she liked it.
She liked the rush.
She liked what she saw in the mirror, when they were done painting her face.
It didn’t look quite like her,
but she could get used to it.
See, this girl,
She was beautiful.
Her skin was fair,
her hair was slick and tight,
her face
was not hers,
and yet
it was.
It was her
but tenfold.
Better.
Prettier.
Older.
Beautiful.
Not her.
She walked that runway with just the memory of the spotlight hitting her face. She saw spots as soon as she turned backstage, but
she was welcomed with compliments.
She felt good.
She looked good.
She was dressed like a woman about to get married.
She was gonna get her happy ending.
Since then she’d flipped through
bridal magazines,
deciding on a dress that would flair out
like gardens at her feet.
She told her sister about her dream,
but she was quick to see that
she only wanted a wedding.
She was too young then,
and she hadn’t seen a marriage
that made her want it.
All she knew was a house
that was mostly empty.
Sundays obligatory.
No speaking.
Just talking out loud.
But she had a dream dress.
She dog-eared the page
as she let the book sit
on the coffee table.
Just in case she stumbled upon something wonderful.
50
Just how wonderful?
Nick Drake wrote about it once.
Play “Northern Sky” now.
51
Love came to her at sixteen,
too soon to be anything.
It was long walks
and midnight talks,
lying on the grass,
counting shooting stars,
but then nothing.
Love came to her at twenty-three,
too much to be taken in.
It was oceans and miles,
changing of seasons and
daylights,
being apart,
but then nothing.
Since then,
love hasn’t come around.
If it does, may it be
the right one.
52
He won’t come.
She’s been waiting this long and for what? All he’s sending are messages in bottles still floating in the ocean aimlessly.
He threw them out into the water a long time ago.
Somehow she’s still waiting at the shore, watching the tide, hoping it brings her his words. But he won’t come.
He has a boat, and he’s been sailing through.
He could have just met you, but here she was, a deserted island.
Waiting for a drizzle.
Waiting for a word.
Waiting for his love.
53
You were the only one who believed that you kept your love for him a secret. Everyone knew. You told them. You didn’t say the words, but you spoke about it in ways that would have been understood by anyone. All this time you were waiting for an answer, but it has been staring you in the face. Years and years and still counting. How long will you keep denying?
He doesn’t love you.
If he did, you wouldn’t be here waiting for a crumb to fall
off his mouth just to nourish you. How famished you are. How malnourished you’ve been from choosing to love a man who has not fed and will not feed you the kind of love that you require.
You are this close to death for being stubborn.
Let yourself be carried out of his cradle,
be caressed by a hand
that won’t rob you of hope.
Let yourself be loved, woman.
It has been too long.
Let yourself be found.
You have been missing
and missing out for so long.
54
Wind-up toy, how far?
His hands are on the winder,
testing your limits.
— You’re only without power if you let him take it
55
What are we doing keeping trinkets of each other, collecting souvenirs of where the other has been? I sent you a postcard, and you pinned it to your corkboard. I wrote you your favorite poem from your favorite film. You played a song in your bedroom that reminded me of you, and you told me about it, too.
Sometimes I dream about getting these messages from you.
You used to give me your ticket stubs, and I’ve had them hidden somewhere in a pile of things that I’ve kept with every move. I’ve changed rooms and houses seven times since, but I always carry you.
And yet we revisit each other only like this.
Why can’t we come home?
Why are we settling with pieces when we are parts of a whole?
56
Sometimes I dream about
full conversations,
but I wake up to
empty notifications.
I keep waiting for you
to show up,
but you never do.
I’ve got to stop waiting to hear back from you.
57
Troubled kid who sat in the back
always seemed to have his shirt untucked.
Their teacher scolded him for many reasons;
he was just all over his lessons.
Somehow she ended up sitting next to him.
He never looked up,
busy shading with his blue pencil,
flirting with shadows and light.
She started to watch his world
instead of the lessons she needed to learn.
One day, he finally handed her a pencil,
saved her a space to draw,
but she only wrote.
She wrote him letters;
he would write her back
in tiny, messy scribbles.
She talked in upside down alphabets
and forgot about graphs.
She gained a pen pal
without purchasing stamps.
That same year, her family
moved away from the city.
She could’ve sworn she wrote him once
on scented stationery.
She can’t remember if he ever wrote back.
Seemed like he would,
but she wouldn’t know.
It required postage and stamps.
58
Airplanes, cargo trucks,
my heart had been traveling
in tiny trinkets.
— send to:
59
Let it be a graze.
Our whole encounter was a series of them.
A day apart,
the next flight,
an early checkout—
if we met now, it would be unlike us.
We were always just seconds from being.
A spark,
never a flame.
Let it be a graze.
60
I love you loudly:
midnight scribbles, ink and keys,
words screaming on sheets.
61
You smell like summer.
Like the hallways at noon,
dashing to art class,
like youth.
Like the breeze touching the ends of my skirt,
like skipping, humming a tune.
You are green grass,
scent of the earth,
Hawaiian ginger,
bright yellow shirt.
You smell like a beginning;
oh, how I cherished you.
62
No love is wasted;
look how much I gained from it:
Poetry. Magic.
— among other things
63
Nobody said you wouldn’t miss the very person you dismissed.
64
Remember that night?
You said,
“Come home with me tonight.”
We walked under those streetlights,
hand in hand.
Years since,
I still keep going back
to that room,
in your bed—
it’s all in my head.
This is where you last lived,
where it last felt like home.
This is where I belonged.
65
I am not honest.
I hold back words with my tongue.
Never with my hand.
66
I bought a house.
I got a car.
They said I had it made.
I went away
and stayed that way;
I’m just living in a suitcase.
Which goes to say:
life is not about how much we make;
it is what we make of it.
67
She lived for ten weeks with two weeks’ worth of clothes and since then realized that she didn’t need a lot to get by. She knew that she surrounded herself with things that she could live without, thinking that the more she acquired, the more reason she had to get by.
She could curate a museum called “things I shouldn’t have bought and have no use for, but I got them anyway.” She buys to exercise her need for control because she is, ironically, powerless over it.
When she lived in a suitcase, she started to count the things she did have.
She had her friend: living, breathing, twirling leftover spaghetti with her fork for breakfast.
She couldn’t imagine what the world would be like without.
68
Your friends took photos.
You weren’t in them at all.
Cruel reminder.
— You left us awhile ago
69
I’ve killed you
a thousand times
in my head.
I’ve often wondered
how you would do it.
Would you grab that knife
downstairs,
the one I used to cut up
apples and pears,
to slit your wrists open?
Would you drink a bunch
of pills,
pretend to sleep,
and never wake up?
I will never know
how you’ve designed
your own death.
I’m not waiting for you to do it.
I wish you’d completely forget
being the architect.
I wish you’d throw away your blueprints.
70
They have called her so many things,
but she is actually just a good actress.
She never is,
but she likes to pretend.
; She sits and watches
and imitates
until she convinces one.
Sometimes all it takes is one for the rest to believe.
She plays a part
until a new role catches her eye.
She chases a new dream,
a new being.
She is never just one thing.
She is a collage of every being
that she has watched
and has taken from:
a strand of hair,
a drop of sweat,
a flake of skin.
She is a papier-mâché
of the people
she wants to be.
Somehow she expects
to find herself in a ball of
leftovers.
But who is she underneath it?
What is her true gift?
71
Doesn’t matter what I do;
you still see me as a failure
for not being able to marry,
not bearing a child,
like I’ve got things mixed up
in my insides.
I know.
Despite my knowledge,
these words swirl around
my belly,
a fetus of doubt and worry,
a voice in the back of my head
saying my existence
depends only on my ability
to birth another life.
I’m sorry if I am not able
to love properly,
or in time,
at least according to your
time lines.
Maybe I have always been slow
or I just never could
or would get it at all.
But I am not sorry
for taking my time,
for weighing my options,
for choosing what I like.
72
These days, I feel like
my head is full but the rest
of me is empty.
— peak anxiety
73
She’s tired of explaining how many times she’s already injured her ankle. Too many times. The first time wasn’t that bad. The last time lasted for months. Her leg atrophied, and she used crutches for the first time. She was stripped of her freedom, couldn’t even bathe without a chair to sit on, couldn’t even climb to her own room, couldn’t even drive