The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: you stupid slut by nat raum

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i, medusa

after Ada Limon

what lurks behind
my irises, beyond the seablue
whose likeness i haven’t seen
since the beaches of barbados?
even then, going on eleven,
i ignored red-ringed warnings
on trees and picked manzanillas
de la muerte2 to launch into the sea
like softballs. believing it to be
sunburn, i was unfettered at first
by scaly swaths of peeling rashy skin
until they still nipped at my face well
after nightfall, slathered with thick
green aloe.

and i still don’t learn from my
mistakes; my instinct is still to throw
stones for practice, for the day
i need to kiss someone back harder
than my lips would let me. i cultivate
a steely stare, practice tossing pebbles,
then slabs of mica—about the size
of those that once left welts on my shins
as i swung out over my parents’ backyard
stream and my best friend skipped rocks
underneath me. i grew so at home
with stones thrown i’ve leaned into
chips in bone and a body numbed
limb by limb. that chill helps me harden,
after all, when i’m nineteen in a stranger’s bed
with only a gaze that slices and the bite of my
wit. with no snakes but the one i’ve trained
in my beast-belly, the lone asp that waits
until they can’t take it anymore to unleash
a venom not unlike a milkwhite sap, stinging
and seeping into cheeks cracked and pink
as a lesser antilles sunset.

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² Spanish colloquialism for manchineel fruit, a poisonous fruit from the tropical flowering plant of the same name

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