yesterday, a man needled blue
into me and told me he was two years sober.
i think of mom
and the way her knuckles almost break
skin; of her nine children and the infertile
twin she named me after.
at night, she sits on the glass
bench in her backyard and tells me she’s alone
in a big house. i haven’t been home
in ten months. i haven’t slept
in her bed and checked the locks
on her doors. i know she’s still swallowing
leftover corks and years lost
to screaming babies and brown hair dye.
i know that i’m going to be the one to speak
this little girl into existence.
Allegra Lisa is a 22-year-old poet attending Sarah Lawrence College in New York. Her work can be found in the upcoming issue four of Exhume Journal, the first issue of Ember Chasm Review, the 2019 issue of Yo-New York!, the anthology The Anatomy of Desire published in December of 2018 in The Poetry Annals, the first issue of What are Birds Journal, and the 2017 spring issue of The Stockholm Review of Literature. One of her poems was nominated for a pushcart prize.
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