Aurora Magazine 2019

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Jessica Calvert

All of these things I’ve kept from my youth, I say to him, especially one— My brilliant way of blowing out candles, my seductive churning of fingers through hair. A handstand positions me to receive, but I give instead, or maybe he takes— I don’t know the difference Inside me or inside me The man behind the curtain was 60 or so, the water poured down over my small body, linen I smelled drying on A thin wire hung from wall to door of my grandmother’s basement, mildew creating a memory of this hour. Only moments before we’d been laughing about our bus trip to the city. Does that hurt you? I watched the doctor push a needle far down into her arm;

No, she laughs, I am too fat to hurt. I didn’t want to hurt her and laugh, but I did.

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