e. kristin anderson

e. kristin anderson i hold my crown like a gun

a golden shovel, after Kesha

The mirror holds the days down, wide eyes how I’m folding back my secrets. In the pines we shiver. Not

a single star could curate this mess—the sky is so asleep that the animals think we’re gone. Remove the denim—I’m

left with skin. How do we bury ourselves here, aching up into the open arms of sugar, wearing a cotton dress for

another last dance under amethyst moon? Crawl into the forest floor, moss wrapping around my feet—another fight

for me to forget tomorrow when I run away again into an anxiety rhythm. Listen for the crows here in the

bluebonnets. Listen along the highway, car bereft of magic, casting eyes from mirrors. You know I’m too warm—and

you know that the sun is only asking for another eclipse. I reach into my stomach for a day’s swallowed bones—don’t

wait for me, though. Wait for the girl inside of me. Learn to want her lips and her hands, her elbows and knees still as soft as the

primroses in your garden—a whole world can grow in concrete and here are the pretty whispers I shove into the cracks when I

know you’re watching, hold tight in my hands when I am sure you’ve gone away, red. In the pines we shiver, still alive

and letting the damp of rain keep us like dolls. Here comes the real, the restless, the animal hunger that I hold tight with

both arms—I die here every night just to see the ghost in the cotton dress calling back at me from the other side of tragic.