3
" ALTERNATE UNIVERSE IN WHICH I AM UNFAZED BY THE MEN WHO DO NOT LOVE ME when the businessman shoulder checks me in the airport, i do not apologize. instead, i write him an elegy on the back of a receipt and tuck it in his hand as i pass through the first class cabin. like a bee, he will die after stinging me. i am twenty-four and have never cried. once, a boy told me he doesn’t “believe in labels” so i embroidered the word chauvinist on the back of his favorite coat. a boy said he liked my hair the other way so i shaved my head instead of my pussy. while the boy isn’t calling back, i learn carpentry, build a desk, write a book at the desk. i taught myself to cum from counting ceiling tiles. the boy says he prefers blondes and i steam clean his clothes with bleach. the boy says i am not marriage material and i put gravel in his pepper grinder. the boy says period sex is disgusting and i slaughter a goat in his living room. the boy does not ask if he can choke me, so i pretend to die while he’s doing it. my mother says this is not the meaning of unfazed. when the boy says i curse too much to be pretty and i tattoo “cunt” on my inner lip, my mother calls this “being very fazed.” but left over from the other universe are hours and hours of waiting for him to kiss me and here, they are just hours. here, they are a bike ride across long island in june. here, they are a novel read in one sitting. here, they are arguments about god or a full night’s sleep. here, i hand an hour to the woman crying outside of the bar. i leave one on my best friend’s front porch, send my mother two in the mail. i do not slice his tires. i do not burn the photos. i do not write the letter. i do not beg. i do not ask for forgiveness. i do not hold my breath while he finishes. the man tells me he does not love me, and he does not love me. the man tells me who he is, and i listen. i have so much beautiful time. "
― Olivia Gatwood , New American Best Friend
8
" 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
