I Watch The Climate Crisis March To My Doorstep, And

I seldom feel the words he says, I’ve steeled myself to any emotion he may try and peel off of me like loose flakes of skin. It is too tough now, calloused to the point of no return. Even his softness though, is lost on me, I feel no warmth or cold. He has forced me to this numb state. He has taught me that feeling leads only to pain.

Have I always sought permission so fervently, or was I confident in myself once? I can’t remember.

My sister drops her head underwater and I follow shortly after. I close my eyes as tight as I can and with cheeks full as balloons, I hold my breath. We both breach the ocean surface and look for each other. And we’re right where we left one another, of course. I miss that feeling of certainty, of knowing who I’m swimming with. Now we are grown and childhood is a twinkle in my eye. I see broken pieces of it if I look hard enough, disappointed at friends that don’t keep their pinky promises, at my husband for leaving the chores to me when she never would. She hated the dishes, the dirty refried beans dad would let soak in the sink and float into patches of dark pinkish slime. But she didn’t let me do them alone. I sit at the beach with my legs long and in the sun. I am warm but not complete. I look around at the flurry of faces, the assortment of multicolored swimsuits striped and polka dotted. It’s charming, but I don’t think I’d know where to look if I put my head under like I used to.

Why is love not enough to keep someone here,

but enough to take them away?

Futureless moth, eating old keepsakes. Nothing else to be done in locked closets but eat. Soothing herself on the past, indulgently gorging on memorabilia, unbothered by the holes her little mouth leaves. No better meal than childhood. No better place to die than in wools, and silks, and cottons, refusing to batter oneself against the closet door.

Our screams were never songs. Is that what you’ve been hearing all this time?

-Diary of a siren

Unable to find love on land, and told she was unappetizing by her siren of the sea, the sailor girl sought out a lake to mope around in. In the water she so loved and away from the aching salty tide at her ankles, she found respite. But another dwelled in the muck of the lake’s bottom, and rose to meet her. A fresh water siren. Friendly as spit, with water’s wake that tasted of sugar and blood, she invited the sailor girl in. Her hair was red and curled, like a devil’s smile. White freckles sat on her face frankly, like table salt.

She reached out to the girl, and began to braid her long blonde hair, dragging her deeper into the water as she did, with a smile full of teeth.

I can’t explain the joy I feel. And isn’t that so wonderful isn’t that so perfect to have a problem doppled in sugar and cherries with pits you suck on until they are bare in your mouth.

What use is death to a creature like me?

Well, I’ll tell you:

Death is an old bedfellow, a partner, a wife;

Is there anything so sweet as a union born in blood?

A promise to always be at each other’s finger tips?

Tool the marble into statue, we sculpt the world,

To improve it, cull those unfit for life by scythe point.

A silly question to ask me, what use is death to a

Creature? Without it, I would not have a life at all.

Like a mutant calf, my village shunned and cast

Me out to meet her, Lady Death.

Art by Jason Scheier