“When I Die, Leave My Body In The Woods. The Wolves Will Be Gentler Than Any Man.”

Flying like a fish out of water

Sea levels rising as the earth gets hotter

I think this weekend I’ll go on an alcohol bender

But at least drinks are free when you’re the bartender.

Be softer with you. You are a breathing thing. A memory to someone. A home to a life.

Nayyirah Waheed

Diana, Huntress by Jules Joseph Lefebvre (1879)

The Pittsburgh Press, Pennsylvania, January 14, 1935

Ohio Total Solar Eclipse

Crawling out of the swamps where you buried me like the setting sun and the moon rises an enemy.

Carolina Outcrop. Never Trust a Woman Who Writes.

You don’t like the way your hair sits? Take mine, I will shear it off without a second thought.

Take my eyes so you may see through them just how beautiful you are.

Take my lungs, that you should never gasp for air.

You’re not comfortable in your skin? Take mine, I will strip it from my body just to see you smile.

My heart is already yours, it has been beating to the sound of your name ever since I first heard it uttered. Take it, it is more yours than it ever was mine.

Take my muscles. May they make you strong enough to never need another.

I will give and give of myself until I am nothing but a meager pile of brittle and broken bones.

Take them. May they be of more use to you than I ever could have been.

What You Missed That Day You Were Absent from Fourth Grade

by Brad Aaron Modlin

Mrs. Nelson explained how to stand still and listen to the wind, how to find meaning in pumping gas,

how peeling potatoes can be a form of prayer. She took questions on how not to feel lost in the dark

After lunch she distributed worksheets that covered ways to remember your grandfather’s

voice. Then the class discussed falling asleep without feeling you had forgotten to do something else—

something important—and how to believe the house you wake in is your home. This prompted

Mrs. Nelson to draw a chalkboard diagram detailing how to chant the Psalms during cigarette breaks,

and how not to squirm for sound when your own thoughts are all you hear; also, that you have enough.

The English lesson was that I am is a complete sentence.

And just before the afternoon bell, she made the math equation look easy. The one that proves that hundreds of questions,

and feeling cold, and all those nights spent looking for whatever it was you lost, and one person

add up to something.