"The Window" by Eva Dominelli
Three poems by Krysten Hill
Girl Breaking Glass
6 Of 8 Shots Hit Stephon Clark's Back. I tell everyone because that’s how I feel.
The fact, a gutted deer in the sky. I wish it would rain. I tell the barista
who just wants to ring up my coffee, the woman reading her phone on the train.
I type it into my email subject line, trying to send a message to my boss.
I erase my subject line and try to correct my thoughts. There is no room for me
to process police acquittals. I can’t take the day off. I need to work
to survive. My anger is displaced. I yell at my white neighbor when she tells me
to calm down. I feel nothing when she cries, surrenders her hands to the threat
in my voice. How easy to imagine my body a weapon I’ve never owned? I’m sick
all the time. I can’t shake this cough. I’m afraid to heal. I call myself a stupid bitch
when I knock over my wine or forget my keys. I take in my sadness
like a corpse holds water. My favorite place to cry is in public bathrooms.
The black woman who shares the sink with me doesn’t ask me what’s wrong
when I come out of the stall. Doesn’t ask me where the why comes from
when it drops like a blackened tooth from my mouth. She looks at our bodies
in the mirror and reaches for me like my mama only does in dreams now.
She’s the first person I let touch me all day. The smell of roses on her shoulder
is a grace I don’t know I need until I’m already on my knees.
The fact, a gutted deer in the sky. I wish it would rain. I tell the barista
who just wants to ring up my coffee, the woman reading her phone on the train.
I type it into my email subject line, trying to send a message to my boss.
I erase my subject line and try to correct my thoughts. There is no room for me
to process police acquittals. I can’t take the day off. I need to work
to survive. My anger is displaced. I yell at my white neighbor when she tells me
to calm down. I feel nothing when she cries, surrenders her hands to the threat
in my voice. How easy to imagine my body a weapon I’ve never owned? I’m sick
all the time. I can’t shake this cough. I’m afraid to heal. I call myself a stupid bitch
when I knock over my wine or forget my keys. I take in my sadness
like a corpse holds water. My favorite place to cry is in public bathrooms.
The black woman who shares the sink with me doesn’t ask me what’s wrong
when I come out of the stall. Doesn’t ask me where the why comes from
when it drops like a blackened tooth from my mouth. She looks at our bodies
in the mirror and reaches for me like my mama only does in dreams now.
She’s the first person I let touch me all day. The smell of roses on her shoulder
is a grace I don’t know I need until I’m already on my knees.
Wasps
nesting under the front porch make the floor sing under my feet.
I know that they could swell me shut, but I hold my palms to the door
that separates us to feel their warning not because I’m not afraid,
but because I imagine a music box—winged bodies circling in their colony,
eating deeper into the house my black grandmother built for her children,
making another heart on the other side of mine. Did you know
wasp nests take the shape of the objects they claim? Fill their gaps with dead
fiber and spit until the places they were are swallowed in paper.
I know that they could swell me shut, but I hold my palms to the door
that separates us to feel their warning not because I’m not afraid,
but because I imagine a music box—winged bodies circling in their colony,
eating deeper into the house my black grandmother built for her children,
making another heart on the other side of mine. Did you know
wasp nests take the shape of the objects they claim? Fill their gaps with dead
fiber and spit until the places they were are swallowed in paper.
Daffodils
Found a photo under my mattress
from the spring you annoyed me
with your new, stolen camera.
Before security told us to leave,
you posed me in the middle
of a city planter crowded
with daffodils. I looked dark
in that azalea-printed dress
their red heads running
on the fabric like wounds.
You took me to your car,
ripped the back out of that dress.
I didn’t have it in me to put it back right.
Didn’t know what color thread
would repair it, my make-shift stitches
an ugly keloid of string.
I let it stay bodiless
in back of my closet.
And I remember when you broke
our last argument into silence.
Your knuckles bleeding, a new hole
in your bedroom wall. You tried
touching me again, pouring
sorry into my hands like I could
heal something with it. I thought
how sick you looked,
a jaundice-faced blossom leaning
in a glass of stale water.
from the spring you annoyed me
with your new, stolen camera.
Before security told us to leave,
you posed me in the middle
of a city planter crowded
with daffodils. I looked dark
in that azalea-printed dress
their red heads running
on the fabric like wounds.
You took me to your car,
ripped the back out of that dress.
I didn’t have it in me to put it back right.
Didn’t know what color thread
would repair it, my make-shift stitches
an ugly keloid of string.
I let it stay bodiless
in back of my closet.
And I remember when you broke
our last argument into silence.
Your knuckles bleeding, a new hole
in your bedroom wall. You tried
touching me again, pouring
sorry into my hands like I could
heal something with it. I thought
how sick you looked,
a jaundice-faced blossom leaning
in a glass of stale water.
Krysten Hill is an educator, writer, and performer who has showcased her poetry on stage at the Boston Book Festival, The Massachusetts Poetry Festival, and many others. She received her MFA in poetry from UMass Boston where she currently teaches. Hill's work can be found in apt, The Baltimore Review, B O D Y, Word Riot, Winter Tangerine Review, Muzzle, PANK, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Take Magazine, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of the 2016 St. Botolph Club Foundation Emerging Artist Award. Her chapbook, How Her Spirit Got Out, received the 2017 Jean Pedrick Chapbook Prize.
Eva Dominelli is a Vancouver artist and freelance Illustrator with a BFA in Illustration from Emily Carr University of Art and Design. Her mysterious gouache and ink illustrations playfully investigate the relationship between the private and the public experience of the everyday. She is currently working on her upcoming artist’s book Between Being & Nothingness.
You can view more of her work at evadominelli.com, on facebook @evadominelliillustration or on instagram @eva.avenue.
You can view more of her work at evadominelli.com, on facebook @evadominelliillustration or on instagram @eva.avenue.
