26
" I am nine.
We are bored
and Karen is dying.
We drove to Austin
that summer
so Sarah's dad-
who described Karen as
/the great and impossible love/
of his life, who taught us
the word /lymphoma/ and then,
the concept of the prefix,
how it explains where the tumor lives-
could say goodbye.
The house is a rind
spooned out by the onset of death,
what's left in the medicine cabinet
full of razors & we are hungry
& alone & sitting
on the living room floor
where the light
from a naked window
slices the hardwood
like a melon, brandishes
each, individualfuzz
on my scabbed calf
a field of erect, yellow poppies
& we have been alive as girls
long enough to know
to scowl at this reveal
& what better time
than now to practice removal.
Once, I watched my mother
skin a potato in six
perfect strokes
I remember this
as Sarah teaches me
to prop up my leg
on the side of the tub
and runs the blade
along my thing, /See?/
she says, /Isn't that so much better?/
Before we left Albuquerque
her father warned us,
/She will have no hair/
a trait
we have just
begun to admire
except, of course
for the hair he is talking about
we hold against our necks,
that which will get us
compliments
or scouted in a mall,
eventually cut off
by our envious sisters
while we sleep. "
― Olivia Gatwood , New American Best Friend
33
" The language of true crime is coded—it tells us our degree of mourning is contingent on the victim’s story. While students and athletes are often remembered for their accolades and looks, sex workers or women who struggled with addiction are reduced to those identities as a justification for the violence committed against them—if their stories are even covered at all. The truth is: It is a privilege to have your body looked for. True crime, while being a genre that so many women rely on for contorted validation, is, simultaneously, a perpetuator of misogyny, racism, and sexualized violence—all of which is centered around one, beloved, dead girl. It is a genre primarily produced by men. A genre that complicates how we bond over our love for it, often unsure of who identifies with the victim and who identifies with the perpetrator. "
― Olivia Gatwood , Life of the Party
