Triumph - I was getting coffee with a friend of mine the other day, one of those friends that you feel are part of a little species only you can understand. I feel rebirthed, I told her. I feel like everyday is bursting with potential and excitement, even if I’m just spinning honey into a mug of hot water. Even if I’ve spent the day grocery shopping or cleaning the house. Even if I’ve only had the time to write a bad poem. The morning presses through my curtains, whispers me awake. It kisses me on the nose and leaping out of the sheets. Everything can be an adventure if you think of it as one, she said. That settled in my mind for a moment. I can feel the strength growing like roots from my feet, but the little tendrils are still fragile. I must be careful of the gusts of wind that come with winter, that leave me off-kilter and rushing into my car mid-day, the doors cracking a bit from the ice that’s crept between them. I feel strangely generative in the depths of January. It could be that I’ve been reading Under the Tuscan Sun as a reminder of Italy, or the romanticized version I have of it now, a year later. I can practically see the tiny petals that scattered, white and wild, in the local park, where couples laid on the grass, blanketless and giggling. It could be that I’ve been trying to get myself to do yoga in the mornings – I get antsy when it hits twenty minutes, but at least I’m trying. It could be that I moisturize my skin every night, and that I have time to snuggle in bed and flip through a book. Oh, how liberating that is, the freedom to read purely for myself. I’m creating content without thinking, letting my thoughts exist freely and wholly, and the more time I have to think, the more the thoughts come and come, like bricks building a wall. The other night, Alex and I were going to go to a small apartment that was canceled last minute. We were both relieved, content with my house and its stupid orange carpet,
— ALANA SEGI-WIGHT / OCEANSIDE, CA
crawling up the stairs like the remains of some sad Muppet. Finding a simple happiness in the dining room set. One of the chairs has been dismembered, its arm dangling off because someone leaned on it the wrong way. Alex still came over, but in the grey sweatshirt I got her for Christmas and two pints of ice cream, demanding that we watch SVU. We kept taking turns to pause it, and never got through the first five minutes. We talked about men and how they seem never to be governed by guilt. We think about this guilt. Guilt for sleeping with someone or for refusing to, guilt for not going to the gym twice a week, guilt for not enjoying the taste of alcohol on our tongues. I think of the guilt I felt on the floor of my sophomore year dorm after he taunted me with our walks from the coffee shop to campus, his hand on my sleeve. The tears that came, the way that Nicole climbed down from her desk chair and held me. She held me, not like I was weak, blubbering into her shoulder, but like I was a strong thing that needed an anchor because strong things that break crumble the quickest. Remembering this now, I look on us as in a silent film, an image of two women hugging one another, forming a pyramid. For a moment, we were one. The woman who has been broken, and who will be broken again and again, but the strong woman too, the one that will lift herself back up from the disappointments, the pain. And now, here I am, in the car with Jackie and Abby, slicing into New York City. Abby’s clunky red van is so out of place in this sleek, compact, glittering space. I feel myself opening my arms up like great wings, gesturing towards the skyline, welcoming Jackie to my city. The light is a misted golden, and we are singing in unison. I can see the car, driving up a hill like we’re rising up from water, glistening. The world folds open for us, bursting with possibility. — DANIELLE FUSARO
— SILVIA GARCIA
