RFKj Believes Water Made Me This Way & Others
Stacey McGill is always thirsty. Whenever my parents took me to the toy store, I walked directly to the back to browse the books. The first time I held The Baby-Sitters Club Super Special, my heart turned to paper; so many chapters for under four dollars. I was the eldest and AFAB, i.e., caregiver. An air sign but a water bearer, I worried I drank too much water. You are like a plant, my ex-aunt said, you do not have diabetes. She was a nurse. My thirst was my thirst. At birthday parties, I never drank soda. I ate cake but not frosting. (Cue three red balloons and one blue on a “retro” tv screen.) I have three siblings. One of these things is not like the others. We grew up drinking the same water. One of these things doesn’t belong. The first time I burned my arm was in the fourth grade. The plastic lampshade singed my skin. The next time was no accident. I didn’t cut myself until I turned thirteen. Five years later, I came out; the self-harm stopped. At age six, I had chopped off my hair, raked it with gel until it spiked (Translation: baby dyke.) I save[d] women’s sports by playing women’s sports. I don’t care what’s in your shorts if you’ve got game. Handle this ball and bury the opposition beside your deadname. I’ll dump the hydration cooler over us myself. Who’s going to look me in the teeth and tell me water is bad for my health? Stacey takes her insulin. The chest I bind is mine. My endocrine system is fine. Appoint those frogs to HHS if they know an easier way for humans to align their bodies and minds.
Palindrome
I swipe right knowing she has 2 dogs, 2 cats, 2 kids (in the future we’ll joke—what if I’d thought she meant goats?). Before she moves to the east coast & appears on the app on my phone screen, before she dances in her New England kitchen to Chappell Roan while watering her houseplants & licking Nutella off a spoon, she lives in California w/ her then-husband & their children. A dozen years ago she is a young mother wearing their infant son against her chest while she holds their daughter’s hand & walks along San Francisco Bay. I think of future-her sitting beside me on a café patio in New York asking if I would’ve given her a perineal massage, because, she says, he’d refused, & how I will say yes w/ a reinforcing nod to communicate over the live music & will tug her torso closer to mine, though what I want to say is yes, & I’d fuck you anywhere anytime … your belly stretched like a drumskin, every kick my palms’ favorite rhythm … & I would’ve recorded each week—precious poppyseed … our sweet pea … kumquat … plum … greetings, eggplant … hi, honeydew … welcome, watermelon—counting down time while it
advanced to the moment she might break the bones in my hands. When I was in elementary school, I watched a tv special w/ my grandmother about a person w/o arms who performed activities of daily living—even smoking cigarettes because it was the 1980s—w/ their feet. I practiced feeding myself & signing my name w/ my toes, just in case. Which means don’t worry, I can hold & change a baby if my hands are in plaster casts; I just need my foot to write a poem in which the two of us meet soon enough — & after all, her dating profile says she’s a Capricorn—to create kids.
A Lap Around the Track
L Peterson is a middle school special education teacher, pursuing their MFA in poetry at the City College of New York. They were a 2023 poetry resident at Bethany Arts Community.
The Marbled Sigh 