I.

I threaded my way through adolescence, ribbons of first blood marred with hoof prints, my first kiss with the butcher’s son. Didn’t care what my father thought. Do you know what could happen if you go out dressed like that?

I wanted to emerge from that maze like spring, like some sylph slender and dancing over daisies. Instead, I was lucky to haul myself over the body bags left lying in the corridors. Tired of the longing for an unknown something, of being angry when it didn’t come, I left. The spiders in their radials wept to see me go.

Released from a lifetime of barnyard stench, I felt the curious sighs of air. Velvet breath against my face soothed the violent pit in the midst of me. I meet the world unarmed now, save for the spiders’ legs hidden in my hair, unwind the thread that bound me to my father’s fate.

Loves me, I rehearse, loves me not, pulling petals from the daisy’s eye.

II. 

Doomscrolling in the dark. What can go wrong will. My phone swears it. The ceiling fan spins like my brain trying to find its way out of these labyrinthine newscasts. Islands destroyed by fire. A president’s felonies. Hottest summer ever recorded in more places than I can count.

I prepared the earth to receive my father’s body while carrying an embryo the size of a beetle. They both bled from me into the rich dirt. One gone too far, the other not far enough. No matter the circumstance, said my therapist, if you felt violated, you were.

I thought I was getting closer to the exit, only to find myself deeper in its depths.