"bleeding title" by Liam Strong

I. jennette, i’ve encouraged my mother to delete her will. it’s unnecessary. would there be a

squabble, the kind siblings wield when they both want a decades old tea set. kindred to loss is a

species of flower we’d probably call beautiful. even the dollar store tinsel is cute.

II. the first time i knew she beat our dog in the alley. the first time i knew she smoked in the

yard, hunched by the window well. the first time she hit me. the first time she with an extension

to the wrist. the first time her ex-boyfriends revisited our house the first time or only or time she

raped me, which i still haven’t received confirmation on, & might never, but if the inkling is

there, jennette, i’ve painted a triptych.

III. down the tallow, the eve’s apples we’ve rehabilitated against. i called her kathy the last 17

years, put her name into my contacts as if she were a step-mother. i watched her dystrophy bend

diagonal. it was a premonition, you’ve said yes, my legal name is jennette mccurdy, & i have

burned a graveyard down with only some cedar berries & pig fat. jennette, i’m fucking scared.

her eyes & joints & dead-ends are molding onto my body so you can’t tell me ghosts want to

move on. our mothers mourn their shared experience. they’re sad, & we shouldn’t care. they’ve

burnt water, calved their pain into ground-up teeth. there’s two chain links split at the scalps &

my dad wants to know if now, finally, we can be a family again.

IV. which, at the very least. suggests we need to scream. i mean, yeah. i’m often stopped from

doing so for some familiar, unknown reason. i’ve had to divide the leftovers of her house

between every thrift store in the city. someone deserves to be happy in the aftermath, or not.

caring is a cardinal sin to us, jennette. while i was cooking yesterday i torched a teflon pan by

accident. intention disregards the feeling. of becoming, embodiment, the high cheekbones we’re

diseased with. doctors have done their job, earned their paychecks. an attempt is an attempt. &

yet. we’re supposed to be in tears.

Liam Strong (they/them) is a queer neurodivergent cripple punk writer who has earned their BA in writing from University of Wisconsin-Superior. They are the author of the chapbook Everyone's Left the Hometown Show (Bottlecap Press, 2023). You can find their poetry and essays in Vagabond City and new words {press}, among several others. They are most likely gardening and listening to Bitter Truth somewhere in Northern Michigan. Find them on Instagram/Twitter: @beanbie666. https://linktr.ee/liamstrong666