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i rub the scratches on my arms. the deep indigo around my eyes. i draw a bath.

hold my head underwater. come up when my lungs flail their fists. i drink in the air

like holy wine, like my last salvation. tomorrow may burn. but i’ll be ready for it.

— Wanda Deglane, from “This Ending I Learn to Love,” published in Glass

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I want each rib in my body to hold the shadow of a lion.

— Ruth Madievsky, from “Bobsled,” published in BOAAT

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“you have to burn the house of your trauma to the ground.”

— mud howard, from “ghoul,” published in Blue Mesa Review

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please prioritize your own health and happiness even when it is inconvenient for others

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“I was beautiful without brutality. // I was beautiful without the steel & hiss of wanting.”

— Emma Bolden, from “In the Absence of Desire I Was No Longer Absent,” House Is An Enigma

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“I can’t measure my grief and I can’t show anyone what color it is. I can offer testimony that others can reject or accept on faith, but my grief is always just my grief, unobservable by anyone but me, and then imperfectly. And maybe it isn’t even grief anymore; maybe it’s envy of people who aren’t grieving, or shame that my grief is lasting so long”

— Sarah Manguso, from The Guardians: An Elegy for a Friend

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me, learning things about myself: oh this is bad

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how many calories do I burn when I run away from my problems?

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My Kink is being right and that’s why I’m turned on all the time

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I pronounce my heart                                                            an open wound that disobeys

— S. K. Grout, from “Corvus,” to be female is to be interrogated

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sure, I don’t get a “healthy” amount of sleep like SOME PEOPLE do but can they do THIS *stands up, blacks out for a second*

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Portrait of a Young Man, detail

Bronzino (Agnolo di Cosimo di Mariano)

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But I pray the vultures pick me

clean like a Tibetan sky burial before anyone smells grief on me.

— Laura Villareal, from “The Long Trajectory of Grief,” published in The Acentos Review

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what’s the may mood?

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