Northern_Lights_2016

39 The Bitch Suzanna Buesing I don’t do it to get rid of the pain. I do it to get rid of the time floating between space, the time when I imagine the monster lurking by the bedside. Laughing at his sleeping prize. I act the way I do to take back the control he thought he had & the touch I never asked for. I yearn for the touch of a man when I want him to touch me. Not forcibly nailing my hands to the bed sheets. I desire a kiss on the cheek, ever so sweet — not gnawing on my neck pressing my lips with the palm of his hand and yelling at me when I say stop. I never wanted that. I never wanted him. America the land of the free yet I was locked in that dorm room enslaved to a man who couldn’t take no for an answer. I got up from that bed. Held back those damned tears and dressed my aching body. Because I needed to do something for myself. Because another moment in that poison & I would be lost staring at my grave. I wanted to rid myself of the taste of his mouth and the touch of his sand paper skin scraping against mine. I left that room whimpering and cracked — not willing to look at the bruising he left on my corpse. Reclaiming my body, I ran south to the haven. Yet when you make some place your home it is hard to leave alone but I left. For the wounds which crippled my mind needed to heal. So call me a whore and a bitch. Please do. Try to suppress my Womanly power. It only burns my fuel brighter and propels me further into a direction where you will never be. Where men re- spect women and women respect men. Where equality is never questioned and thank god my yes is a yes and my no is a no. So no, I’m not getting rid of the pain or the scars but rather, getting rid of the rotten taste he left in my mouth. Shape of a Soul Becca Simon I was crossing the road when my bicycle wheels turned into squares. Cars barked every letter of the alphabet, but my hands are fettered to the han- dlebars and I am glued to the spot where my kindergarten teacher tells me that quadrilaterals have four equal sides and only circles are endless. My soul’s wheels still barrel along the path, unaware that my body re- mains motionless on the intersection contemplating the circumference of a square. The evening air is crisp and the tangerine sky is stained with tomorrow’s deadlines, sunset bathing under streamers of sherbet-colored falsities. A man throws his dog a pentagon. The woman with her octagon heart in her hands bids me a forlorn good evening and the boy with trian- gular roller blades struggles wearily past. Ruler in hand, I think about all the people whose lives are restricted by sides. I calculate the sides: expectations, exhibition, practicality, limitation. You are only a person if and only if you have four congruent sides and compose perfect right angles. There must be a side, must always be a side to stop our wheels from turning, turning, turning. But people aren’t meant to maintain one shape. Sometimes, A is not con- gruent to B and diagonals don’t always meet at 90°. My geometry teacher says “Show your proof,” but I have none. If my wheels are squares now, then next week they’ll turn into hexagons, until I finally make peace with the road I’m on and they become circles again. And even roads run out when they’re tired.