Red
The Big Bad Wolf swallowed you, I think.
What big teeth you had—
all the better to devour me with.
I was a little girl, and you, my father.
A little girl, and you, the wolf.
Ten years later and I’m an ugly thing now,
the ugliest thing in the room.
With my red hood and glasstooth claws,
I’m the one they’ll warn you about—
minefield mouth, teeth like graves.
They’ll say she’s the bad part of town,
don’t walk through her streets at night.
The Big Bad Wolf ground me
until razors came out of my skin.
Tore my heart out. Drowned it in the river.
Showed me how to make the water
run red. Come back looking for that
little girl, I dare you.
I’ll show you a beast instead.
Stomaching
i.
Tell me about the future where we sit at the kitchen table
eating pancakes and blueberries,
all four of us together with jam on our fingers.
How the sun through the blinds makes filigree on the marble table,
lace made of light.
It’s not like there’s anything special about this morning.
It’s 10 AM, we are still rubbing sleep from our eyes, my sister is
giggling about something
you said. There is nothing different, but at the same time,
there is.
It’s you. And me. And the easy banter
that unfolds between us like the flowers in the vase.
It smells like lilacs.
It smells like amity.
ii.
Tell me about the future where we sit at the kitchen table
and you give me back my voice.
How it curls in your palm like a dried tongue, all withered
muscle. How it flops when I touch it. How I take it and
put it back inside my mouth,
but it scrapes against my teeth, squirms at the back of my throat,
worms its way down my esophagus like a piece
of food I’m not able to chew.
Tell me about how you try to give me back
the pieces of me you butchered,
but you can’t find them inside your stomach.
iii.
Tell me about the future where we sit
at the kitchen table and you show me your hands.
Your palms: lined with life.
Your palms: dirty with it.
Tell me about how you take them and throw them
in the river and say, I will not hurt you
anymore.
How you drown your hands in the water but still are left
with your skin.
How you drown your hands in the water but still are left
with the ghosts.
To My Fourteen Year Old Self
If you are looking for a way to get through this… love. Hold love between your hands like a plum and bite into it, taste its sugar ripeness. Let it swell around your tongue. Let it slide down your esophagus, thick and warm as honey, and create a fire in the pit of your stomach.
Your therapist will tell you that opposite action is the trick. When all you want to do is stay in bed and decay beneath a mountain of blankets, pull back the curtains, get dressed, and go for a brisk walk in the forest while listening to the birdsong. When your mind tells you that eating is something only bad girls do, call your friends and have a buffet. And when you feel so angry and bitter and full of hate that it stings inside your gut like alcohol poisoning, find something, someone, to love. Let it be yourself.
I know it’s hard. I know that you feel like a mermaid slipping beneath the surface of the water, shedding scales from your wrists. You look at seaweed and only see nooses, at clamshells and only see sharp edges to cut yourself on. But one day you will find your legs and you will race along the shoreline as if you have wings. This, I believe.
Let love be your revenge. He thought he had scraped all the love out of you, didn’t he? He thought that he had made a crime scene out of you, a chalk outline of a girl filled with cement. He thought he had left you barren. So, love out of spite. Love like look-at-me-I’m-still-human, like you-couldn’t-take-this-away-from-me-even-though-you-tried. Love like boasting, like triumph, like pride. Love like I-can-do-what-you-couldn’t. Love like the ocean loves the moon. Like there are tides inside of you tugging you toward your own heart.
And remember, always, that this isn’t your fault. There is a sparrow in your throat that loves to sing blame in the mornings and guilt before sleep, so swallow it and let your own voice sing instead. You deserve to be heard. There are a thousand setting suns in your ribcage lighting up your heart and there is a galaxy inside your stomach that only wants to expand, expand, expand into something greater than the confines of your body. You are beautiful in the way space is beautiful: it doesn’t know it houses everything inside of it. It doesn’t know it is endless. The constellations inside of you still have so many stories to tell.
You are going to be okay, I promise. It’s written in those stars.
Martina Dominique Dansereau is a non-binary queer writer and performance poet from Vancouver, Canada, who spends the majority of xyr time blogging, snuggling snakes, and crying over spoken word. Xe writes and performs with candour and intensity about being an abuse survivor as well as exploring and critiquing topics such as queer love, the gender binary, intersectional feminism, and mental illness through the lens of firsthand experience. Xe is the founding editor of Transcending Shadows Review, has been published by Literary Orphans, Vine Leaves Literary Journal, and more, and is part of a forthcoming poetry anthology by Words Dance. Xe is passionate about anti-oppression, radicalizing self-care, and going on late night walks in the rain. You can find xem online at http://numinous-lights.tumblr.