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a space for youth writing on mental health & identity
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a space for youth writing on mental health & identity
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![]() At the cash register, I clutch color correctors and pennies and a fistful of stray dollars and a “Good, how are you?” that lolls in my mouth, wet and empty like the oranges and greens I hold so I will not have to explain anything to anyone if they ask What happened? I painted autumn on my skin, and beat it with the cream of dead leaves and dirt, a sort of brown butter that smoothed uneven mounds away,
then blended in rain until the colors had faded clean. We were alone in the locker rooms, The day I said I fell, Tucking errant fabrics in through the slits of lockers ruddy and raw, laced with the smell of uric leather and rust. She watched me put away my color correctors, and wondered what kind of fall looked like that. I lied. In the little lilac office, On a couch too contrived to be comfortable, With Master’s degrees hanging behind a printer, a computer, A screen of incompletes, of 0s— an oval of a concerned mouth, and tired lashes that raked me, those glazed whites of a story heard too many times. She asked to see—as if seeing would help her understand what happened. It was in the bathroom—the first time —Or the kitchen, I don’t remember. But it was in the spring—the last time, holding empty tubes and change that the wrong hues bloomed up before me: Garnet in seafoam Lilies in sunshine and I corrected their color. Comments are closed.
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Unless otherwise noted, all pictures used are open-source images in the public domain. Archives
November 2023
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