First Draft
The Merella Papers. Top Story - March 2025.
Note: this poem was written about a very personal moment in my life. I met my half-sister when I was living and working in MontrƩal as a grad student. I saw her photograph when I was a teenager, but it was many years before we met. And I wrote this as a way to understand my emotions and feelings about chance, love and how life can throw you curves you never expect.
By Kendall Defoe 12 months ago in Poets
building the mid-20s lexicon
by wearing a hair clip, going to the movies for the first time in six years -- with an ex, no less; the one who liked degrading sex; mess; he keeps his hand in agitated rest, icy on my left thigh -- by drinking beet juice (within five days of opening) because I feel particularly earth-bound, because it smells like the bottom of a well (near-empty), by leaning into the short haircut, which feels both manageable and unruly and, at last, aged instead of juvenile (the movie theater bathroom mirror is so piercing and portal-esque I wonder how long I can keep up this confident mien), by lamenting about meal planning and blepharitis with my cousin, by breaking in a posture brace, by inching toward a 1000-day Duolingo streak, by considering using Afterpay for a 1.7 fl. oz. face cream, by running out of shelf space, by developing a halcyon attachment to the squirrel that's made a home under the solar panels, takes a routine jaunt across the porch to eat ice chips, by throwing out anything with underwire, by treating each errand as sacrosant, by building World Market wishlists, by staring at my hands a lot, by Mary Oliver's locution, by rereading, by radically championing how my face splits in half, by sending love to the tip of my skull, by seeing what builds up under my nails.
By Erin Latham Shea12 months ago in Poets
