Rowan Bradley

“I am nine.
We are bored
and Karen is dying.

We drove to Austin
that summer
so Sarah's dad-

who described Karen as
/the great and impossible love/
of his life, who taught us

the word /lymphoma/ and then,
the concept of the prefix,
how it explains where the tumor lives-

could say goodbye.

The house is a rind
spooned out by the onset of death,
what's left in the medicine cabinet

full of razors & we are hungry
& alone & sitting
on the living room floor

where the light
from a naked window
slices the hardwood

like a melon, brandishes
each, individualfuzz
on my scabbed calf

a field of erect, yellow poppies
& we have been alive as girls
long enough to know

to scowl at this reveal
& what better time
than now to practice removal.

Once, I watched my mother
skin a potato in six
perfect strokes

I remember this
as Sarah teaches me
to prop up my leg
on the side of the tub

and runs the blade
along my thing, /See?/
she says, /Isn't that so much better?/

Before we left Albuquerque
her father warned us,
/She will have no hair/

a trait
we have just
begun to admire

except, of course
for the hair he is talking about
we hold against our necks,

that which will get us
compliments
or scouted in a mall,

eventually cut off
by our envious sisters
while we sleep.”
― Olivia Gatwood, New American Best Friend

“Since the disintegration of her parents' marriage, she'd only loved two things. The first was her long blonde hair. The second was how easily she could cut it off... And feel nothing.”
― Scott Neustadter, (500) Days of Summer: The Shooting Script

“This is the hardest part—
That boy is not made of fists.
That boy
learned how to braid my hair.
These things do not un-truth themselves
when the first door slams.
I did not stop loving him
all the months I was holding my breath.”
― Brenna Twohy, Forgive Me My Salt

“Finding yourself" is not really how it works. You aren't a ten-dollar bill in last winter's coat pocket. You are also not lost. Your true self is right there, buried under cultural conditioning, other people's opinions, and inaccurate conclusions you drew as a kid that became your beliefs about who you are. "Finding yourself" is actually returning to yourself. An unlearning, an excavation, a remembering who you were before the world got its hands on you.”
― Emily McDowell