Dear Medusa

Poems are like underwear. Sometimes you want people to see them. Sometimes they're uncomfortable. Sometimes they're dirty, sometimes they're full of blood." -Alicia

to have men in your life who know that the battle we face against men who are wolves can only be won with the help of men who are not.

It is incredible to me that boys are allowed to be boys for so long, while girls are made women years before we’re ready.

My mother thinks I’ve dyed my hair red for attention— How can I explain to her the ways that she is right and wrong. As of last night, my hair is the color of a brick the moment before it goes through a stained-glass window. My hair is the color of a fire engine driving through a burning building. My hair is the color of a dart frog: generations of death adapting into this exact shade of poison. It’s called aposematism— we learned about it in bio. It’s when an animal advertises to predators that it is not worth the attempt to consume. Bright red and orange, the colors of pain, I WILL MAKE YOU SICK I WILL KILL YOU FROM INSIDE YOUR THROAT ATTENTION! I MAY LOOK LIKE PREY BUT I WILL END YOUR LIFE My mother says I want attention and maybe she’s right My mother says I am just making a statement and maybe she’s right But in my mind it’s not saying please— it’s saying don’t and this is how I know men are not really wolves because maybe a wolf would listen.

I remember the thing that I saw on Tumblr, how people with trauma will sometimes reexpose themselves to it, salt in the wound to stay alive. I am tired of salting the wound - I am ready to salt the earth.

Sometimes I'm torn about eyes because there are times when I'm riding the bus walking to class shopping with my mom, when I look up to find eyes on my body, hungry stare, sometimes someone my age and sometimes not, a stare that turns me into a meal. And sometimes I like the way it feels like someone has lit a torch in my stomach in the deepest night and all the moths come seeking. Is it possible to like something sometimes and hate it other times? Am I allowed to decide when I want to be a feast?

She wouldn't care, says his friend. All she cares about is her fucking piano And I don't know who they're taling about or who this piano-loving person is but I think I agree with the dude: some people are so focused on the things that are important to them that your wounds are insignificant. Maybe it doesn't mean that they're evil, but it doesn't mean you're not bleeding.

There should be a special word for the kind of heartbreak that comes not from a lover but from a friend." -Alicia

Some people are so focused on the things that are important to them that your wounds are insignificant. Maybe it doesn’t mean that they’re evil, but it doesn’t mean you’re not bleeding.

You never know if something is the last until it is.

And I hear my grandma's voice in my head 'Birds of a feather' and Mr. Mattson's voice 'Like attracts like,' and I wonder what kind of bird what kind of element am I, where the kinds of things I attract are the friends the people who want to hurt me.

Random thoughts about Debbie's finger I've heard you can reattach the thing that's been severed but only if you find it in time before rot sets in and I wonder if it's the same with souls: if you have a finite amount of time to find the thing you've lost before you are forever soulless.

I read an article about mass shootings and how when a person survives one in a movie theater perhaps they may never go to the movies again. The wide dark, the silver glow, only the narrow aisles for cover... it's all too much. Sites of trauma. And I think that school has obviously become a site of trauma for me but so has Kroger and the park and sometimes the bus even though it also a vessel of freedom. But the thing that all of these sites have in common is my body, and I wonder sometimes how you avoid a site of trauma when the site is your own self and I think the answer is you stop thinking of the body as yours and maybe that makes it easier to walk inside it.

Tinsley seems nice enough but he doesn't know that the girl he sees catching the bus has two bloody stumps under her shirt where wings used to be and when we makes jokes about running the stumps tingle, phantom limbs. He doesn't know he's talking to a ghost that when he jokes about running he's rubbing salt into a wound he can't see.

But everything seems to be bleeding together, and carried along on the current are white pieces of paper sticking out of my locker screaming ME TOO and yes, maybe I could bear it all, bear this... but after everything else why should I why should I why should I My eyes are already open but now I open my mouth, wondering if I'm brave enough to scream.

and I almost say I didn’t think you were the kind of girl who cried but being a misanthrope doesn’t mean anything when it comes to a broken heart.

It is incredibly to me that boys are allowed to be boys for so long while girls are made to be women long before we’re ready.

My hair is the color of a dart frog: generations of death adapting into this exact shade of poison ...bright red and orange, the colors of pain, I WILL MAKE YOU SICK I WILL KILL YOU FROM INSIDE YOUR THROAT ATTENTION! I MAY LOOK LIKE PREY BUT I WILL END YOUR LIFE

The last barbecue I went to was at Sarah's house and I almost text her to tell her how when you have so many memories with one person, it's like a crime scene after they're gone. Fingerprints everywhere, sometimes visible and sometimes only popping out at the eye when a light is shined from a specific angle.

It's not until Uncle Ronnie returns from the grill with the final plate of burgers, settling into a seat at the head of the table, that it hits me. He makes himself a plate then gazes down the table, his eyes coming to rest on me and Deja. 'So how is school for you girls?' 'Grades okay?' And then I realize: he sees me as a child. It's like a bolt of lightning snaking down electric from the sky. Almost every day since I was thirteen, since my body first began to transform, I have moved through the world surrounded by men trying to convince me and themselves that there is no such thing as too young for a woman, or too old for a man, that there is no such thing as an unavailable female body. I have been moving through the world feeling like a glowing green light, green for go Go GO and Deja's uncle Ronnie is the first person in a long time to see me, not the red of my hair, but me and decide on his own to stop.

And then the whisper becomes words: 'You could run again.' 'You could run in college.' 'Coach Young always said you could.' 'You could go to the Olympics.' And that's where I smash the whisper with my fist, because sometimes it seems absurd to wish for things I know I don't deserve How could I? Look what I am.

David gets in the front seat and I don't even argue, I imagine the backseat as a ditch on a battlefield, safe-ish from flying artillery. But no one argues. My dad is an expert at pretending everything is fine, and my brother actually smiles tells Dad a story from school. I should be happy, relieved that the two hours to Cincinnati are peaceful, but I can't help but feel everyone in the car is wearing a mask, especially me

We're pulling into the parking lot when he finally speaks asks me why I don't run track anymore: I was so good I was so fast Didn't I set a record Yes I was Yes I was Yes I did But I don't say it out loud: those words have sharp edges and snag in my throat. Instead I say 'I just have other priorities right now' and am out of the car before he can ask what they are, before he can see the tears that emerge for the first time since the Day. 'Thanks for the ride, though

Staring at my legs, I remember how they once felt carrying me around the track, one stride at a time, one breath at a time. The never-ending strike swish strike as my legs carried me on and on, part of a beautiful, complicated machine. My body felt powerful capable brimming with joy, part of me. Now I feel like Dorothy, tumbled out of a tornado into a strange land. I don't recognize any part of myself. When I stare too long at any one extremity hands ankles I feel a swell of something like grief, words in my head repeating Those aren't mine Those aren't mine I'm not mine

I keep seeing Geneva in the museum and it feels more like history the way I end up in the same exhibits as Geneva, the way we end up side by side studying ancient suits of armor, as if a magnet has been installed between my ribs and draws me toward something in her made of iron or nickel. 'I thought they were all made of metal,' she says, and i think she's reading my mind until I realize she's talking about the armor, the way the exhibit says some civilizations made armor out of plants, of animal, of wood. 'Some are made of bone too,' I say, pointing. And then she's looking at me, her hand raised, and she takes a single finger and presses it against the back of my hand, saying 'And some are made of skin.

But he has his own apartment and he takes me there where I wade into that dark water, sometimes looking at my phone to see when it will start glowing and screaming, my father coming to the house to check on us and finding me gone. But it never does. He never does.

I don't wear dresses. But sometimes when I'm trying to transform myself into someone with a heart made of iron I tell myself this is what I am, that my hair is red like a siren and not a salamander that I am a vicious man-eater and not a rabbit not a rabbit not a rabbit not something so easily so consumed I am the thing with fangs. Not a wolf but something more monstrous, not a sad girl with a scar across her soul but a creature who eats souls for breakfast.

That's when the game began Maybe not right away His arm around my shoulders His finders at the edge of my bra, it pulled all my atoms apart then dropped me into stasis. Weeks passed and months, everything that made me who I am rearranged, like Dr. Manhattan in the test chamber put back together as something not quite human. I saw on Tumblr that people with trauma will sometimes reexpose themselves to trauma over and over until they think they understand what happened. I don't know why I play the Game. I understand what happened. My biology teacher hurt me and if I was smarter I could find a clever metaphor about chemistry that tells why and how but the simplest way to say it is that I was a student but he saw a rabbit and no one will believe me because he's the most beloved wolf in school.

The thing about giving things away is that people think because you give things away that means nothing can be taken from you even if the thing you give away is your body. Is that what it means to be canceled? Is canceled like math: giving and taking away canceling each other out until nothing