alternate universe for Beverly Marsh by Em Norton

by Vagabond City Literary Journal
after IT (2017) there is no such thing as girlhood just a temptation to starve but there is no such thing as fathers either so save your spit or swallow you can eat here and you can dance in your bra and if something like a man greedy and slobbering so much as looks at you i’ll destroy them. there is no such thing as mirrors. we look like what we look like and cut our hair like jigsaw puzzles we laugh because nothing matters and everything feels so good. here where we tie red balloons to our fingers with ribbon and do not float we choose not to float you lay still, freckles blooming, on sunlit rocks and i swear you’re safe and rage is just a song the wind sings when it’s cold really cold it was never you, bev it was the wrong place wrong front door wrong season. no one wants a friend as badly as he does being a daughter is winter or whatever is left of it it isn’t even the whitest part just the crumbs down the sidewalks, draining the snow clumps like hair and heaves itself away in a dangerous mess and leaves you a ghost here you are not just a body / not girl/ not daughter/ not precious baby curls you are january embers falling igniting you came first you survive the longest.

Em Norton is a poet from Toronto. You can find Em on Twitter @_emnorton and read more at patreon.com/emnortonwrites.

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Vagabond City Literary Journal

Founded in 2013, we are a literary journal dedicated to publishing outsider literature. We publish art, prose, reviews, and interviews from marginalized creators.