Dead Girl Stories

by Hillary Smith-Maddern

I was once the kind of person     whose 

bikini strap twisted, whose pale 

shoulders said April     aloud and prayed 

for rain. Spring was always caught between my lips,

and now even that brief phoneme leaves me     exhausted.

Image credit: Vino Li on Unsplash

…… 

I loved crossing borders. Flirting     with men

who took their cuts in mouthfuls. He said I wore

enchanting     like a pair of designer sunglasses.

When he asked me where I was from, I said, Nowhere,

an answer I believed skirted the edge of both

aloof and mysterious. How strange     to home it

now, to hang my limbs on its earthen walls, 

to crave its quiet predictable rapture. 

…… 

It gets scary in these human bodies.     Your breath

catches in my hair     sometimes the way we used to catch

snowflakes on our tongues, cold and there 

until they were invisible and vanished. So precise

and gritty     the way you tell my story, crying

in unread genres, rendering all the letters in my name

silent. Bury the syllables. Unearth     big rows of black

tulips where my teeth used to be.

***

Hillary Smith-Maddern

Hillary Smith-Maddern is an educator whose work explores the intersections of feminism, queerness, and rage. She is a proud cat lady and an avid collector of neglected plants. When not writing, she can be found exploring obscure topics, hiking in the mountains, or passionately critiquing the patriarchy. Her poetry has appeared in Only Poems, Rogue Agent, and The Disappointed Housewife, among others. She lives in Western Massachusetts.