Faria

Who would have thought that pain // And weakness had such gifts / Hidden in their rough hearts?

‘The shaft’ by Helen Dunmore

Childhood dotted with bodies. // Let them go, let them / be ghosts.

‘Origin of the Marble Forest’ by Gregory Orr

Even a small cough. / Even a small love.

from ‘Small Wire’ by Anne Sexton

I called her name into the fold between night and day. I called it without expecting her to answer.

‘Questions’ by Marie Howe

I thought I'd die / from being loved like that.

‘Annunciation’ by Marie Howe

Devoured him whole, in one big bite, / so he could see just how hungry a woman can be.

‘Like a Wife’ by Kate Baer

Hand on my heart. Hand on my stupid heart.

‘Meditations in an Emergency’ by Cameron Awkward-Rich

Please / just open the door / to the sun

‘Swell’ by Hoa Nguyen

I was still myself after, but a new grief opened / inside me like an umbrella.

‘The End of Girlhood’ by Traci Brimhall

I am altered by every person who / loves me with ifs—if only I were myself but not myself, if only

‘The Owl Question’ by Faith Shearin

how will I fit all this life in one life? / I need a map, a vocabulary list; I can't learn the world // fast enough.

‘Piano Lesson’ by Faith Shearin

It is June. I am tired of being brave.

‘The Truth the Dead Know’ by Anne Sexton

you put it in, / you pull it out, the story’s over,

‘The Alteration of Love’ by Myra Shapiro

I wanted so bad, so bad
to be so many things,
without the whole thing
falling down.

‘I Wanted to Be’ by Marc Kelly Smith

There was no childhood, just anticipation.

‘No Childhood’ by Adam Zagajewski

and if we were a little droopy in the drawers it was / only because we lacked relevance. Our lives seemed / to exist next to our lives.

‘Exceptions with the Sloughing Off’ by Lilah Hegnauer

It’s not that you don’t love them anymore. / You’re trying to remember something / too important to forget.

‘The Art of Disappearing’ by Naomi Shihab Nye

you who have made bright things from shadows, / you who have crossed the distances to roost in me.

‘Birds Appearing in a Dream’ by Michael Collier

Your life is a dog. He’s been hungry for miles, / Doesn’t particularly like you, but gives up, and comes in.

‘The Resemblance Between Your Life and a Dog’ by Robert Bly

If grief is love with nowhere to go, then / Oh, I’ve loved so immensely.

‘Greensickness’ by Laurel Chen

Our hearts were formed before our bones, // but what else do I really know / about myself?

‘Opposing Easels’ by Thomas Mixon

He just looked at me. / That was when I knew.

‘The Last Time I Saw God’ by Michael Bazzett

I'm still a small body
on a big planet I'm still
the same person thinking
about foxes and the speed
at which they can run

‘Type to Learn’ by Natasha Rao

I am at your feet / Ready to do the walking for you

‘The Groveler’ by Dorothea Lasky

The world holds you on its tongue / And no one can save you

‘The Amethyst’ by Dorothea Lasky

And I become almost, but not quite

‘The Orange Flower’ by Dorothea Lasky

Like what / motherfucker what!? What / voice to spill the body, this body, into? This my what body?

[I sit with what I can imagine about what] by Ed Pavlić

every / day you are so tall and I am / such a small mother.

‘Small Essays on Disappearance’ by J. Mae Barizo

Brothers, I’ve been looking
for someone to hand my body
over to, so that the dirt
will not page through it.

‘The War Against Birthdays’ by Josh Bell