Breadcrumb #212

JD DEHART

A stolen name sounds
just as beautiful as a new one.
It has a lyric and a rhyme.
A music all its own.
All can be shining bright
like a coat of armor.
But who are you named for?
A queen, a king, a conquering
ancient figure of beauty, wrath?
A painting of an imagined person?
Do not let these musings about
old days make you restless,
let them be your pillow.
Let them usher you into rest
and rouse you in the morning.
This is the universe and, I mean,
what else are you going to do?
Take advice, play the game,
see where the cards may fall.
Are you named for an old
western star or a baseball player?
A starlet or a harlot?
Make the name your own,
let it swell someone else with
pride, and let it echo on someone's
tongue, let them say
What a kind person, strong being,
inspiration to behold, in spite
of whatever the name might have
been.  Have the courage to challenge
connotation with your own
redefinition, bring to life the narrative
you want to form, you dreamed
of forming, that dream you wanted
to find again in a sleepless night.
Find someone you don't know (here
is your homework), say Behold,
then walk away and see what may
come of the brief interaction.
They may think you strange, but
that's all the better.

• • •

Breadcrumb #211

J. BRADLEY

The worst thing that ever happened to me was discovering my body, how it blushed and fluttered when I thought of who I wanted to be with. I didn’t ask my father what to do about it. He was only interested in the towering aspect of fatherhood; a fist was more effective than a sentence. I always did my best to not leave any evidence in my laundry but my mother knew what was happening as my chest became a carpet one hair at a time.

    At night while everyone’s asleep, I look out my window. I imagine buildings sprouting up from the plague of houses around ours. They sprout high enough to clot the clouds and the stars; my body is a crowd waiting for the right words to riot.

• • •

Breadcrumb #210

MERCY TULLIS-BUKHARI

The façade was defined by a
man bleeding on wood,
and that façade created a
space between
acceptance and detachment—
where you will be cool,
if you were anything but you—
where children, who had just
seen their sperm and blood
had a false faith in their
nascent familiarity with adulthood.

Where you attached to those
beliefs that felt right
at the time, but—

My god, really, ran on
Maybelline red lipstick.

That one day, though, I, 
fatigued by the race of
running away from me,
you, inspired by
a guardian angel,

you said to me—

Hey, you know, you
are beautiful the way are.
I mean, you are pretty, 
regardless, but how you look,
just you—

You saw my born face, and
reassured me that the created
face was an illusion solely appropriate
for this masquerade party called
Catholic high school.
You weren’t that viejo sucio who sold
numbers on the corner, who always tried
speaking to me on some man-woman-level
shit. You were not that
19-year old, who lured me with
Pac-Man then conquered me with his penis.
You were not that kid riding on the
fallacious, so-called looseness
of a coquettish girl who smiled at all,
since attention from home was none 

You were…
well, this other kid—
the mother’s arms after birth—
who felt the path my pain could
have taken me.
The androgyny of the comment felt safe—
I wanted to fall backwards, now knowing
that my future, in its new path, 
would catch me and float my adolescence
into iron womanhood.

Did you walk on water, my friend?

You are the angelito, 
Telling me, all is well, little one.
All is well when you are just you

• • •

Breadcrumb #208

SARAH SCHNEIDER

He told my friend I needed a clipboard and a couch.
She told me
embarrassed, reticent.
I made a show of brushing it off, but I felt my insides tighten around the memory of a quiescent past

So familiar,
that confirmation bias,
that self-fulfilling prophecy. 
It’s all consuming, intoxicating, validating.  
Am I giving in because It’s comforting? Because It’s scratching some itch I’ve learned to ignore?
Or is it my sick need to people please?  My unconscious, spot-on aptitude to conform to whatever it is that people (men) want,
to be his damsel in distress,
his punching bag
his inflater of ego.   

But I know this game.

I made a conscious decision to not sleep with anyone that night. 
Not with that bartender who lives down the street.
Not with him.
I sat in my computer chair
drunk
and ate 7-eleven macaroni and cheese in my underwear.
I filled a different hole.

That means I’m not crazy, right

• • •