I Write

BY SALOMÉE LOU

Amanda was wearing the sun on her face today

I wanted to ask her: how? How do you do it?

I didn’t say anything.

I just walked back home.

I walked through the park There was a memorial for Sabina and Sarah and all the others.

Another woman was there, she was writing something down on a piece of paper something like ‘Educate your sons’ or ‘Say her name’ she looked up at me and smiled I smiled back. Not a happy kinda smile a this-is-a-shitty-world-we-live-in kinda smile all I wanted to do was scream, loudly. But I didn’t.

I just walked back home.

I turned on my laptop. The deadline is in twenty-four hours. I have twenty-four hours to write about my love for words and literature and women.

I have twenty-four hours to show you, I am worthy of being published, and that if I don’t I am still enough. I am enough.

It was never about being published or stepping foot on stage

It was never about wearing my skin inside out It’s always been about survival.

I write because I feel so fucking insecure and heavy all the time.

I write for Aileen and all the other women killed by the patriarchy.

How long would it take to name them all? They deserve a fucking poem. They deserve an entire anthology.

How long will it take to erase the fear from our bodies? How?

I don’t want to count them anymore. So I write.

I don’t want to go to another rally another vigil I don’t want to light another candle she wasn’t a tiny flame she was a raging fire men were too afraid of her power. I don’t want to share another Instagram story a picture of her graduating smiling in love dancing eating thriving. raped. killed.

I write to come back home to myself. I write because it’s my only way of being It’s my only way of existing in this world. When things get overwhelming I write When I am scared I write When I am sad I write.

Writing is my oldest friend writing is like breathing, I know it will get me through anything.

The words are merging nothing makes sense anymore. Tomorrow, I might ask Amanda: how? Because I want to wear the sun on my face, too.

Passionfruit

BY GEORGINA JERONYMIDES-NORIE

She lifts the fleshy seeds from the passionfruit with her tongue looks up at me we go to bed. We gorge on warm miso aubergine saltysweetsoft and oily I look at her we go to bed again. I had never before and as I am it is the most comfortable thing my mouth tasting what it’s been missing

I have dreamt of this so many times craved her denied myself it is the longest diet I have ever been on. thought it unreal this hunger just drunkenness and now I am here and we are sated and she has gone to buy doughnuts and there will be jam spilling because they’re bougie and expensive and I can already picture her taking a bite sugar speckling her lips I would love to say it all feels easy now feasting, giggling, exploring but it comes with so much weight: my first boyfriend at thirteen my last at twenty-eight the discomfort I always felt sharing a bed with hefty bones my head pushed down without caress spitting body a leather throw care instructions worn away by heavy hands

Then there is betrayal when she wraps her legs around my hips

What were the previous fifteen years loving such troubled men? Why did I cry the first, second, third time I slept with a woman?

I remember one day tenderly bathing scooping the rose-scented water bringing it to my lips the feeling that yes, women the pure wavy joy the doubt that followed

The first time I say it out loud –that women, perhaps only women – I am in a club dancing, celebrating and I don’t know don’t have to know if it is true for now or forever just that it feels like rose-scented bubbles swaying with my body and that being resolute about something for once even just for a moment, feels good It has taken so long to get here: a woman nestled into my neck sober and aglow in the sun watching as it sinks into the river and I would love to say that it all feels easy now but there are glances that last a second too long before parents beckon their children away from the riverbank where we sit laughing kissing unholy

I think back to the Snake that thoughtful creature offering the possibility of something so sweet so different so incredibly red Eve, accepting it instead of denying herself how sorely undermined she has been declared tricked rather than invited

Imagine that first crisp bite the slap of sweetness upon her lips how delicious it must have been how worth it.

Now, I am thinking of passionfruit aubergine doughnuts apples it is not easy but it feels right fleshy saltysweetsoft and oily I look up at her spilling comfortably all over my bed

It is worth it.