Movement one
By Dorothy Lune
0% oxygen, this room is square and half
sun half moon, light slinks in at one of the corners
of the high ceiling without opening itself,
all I hear is skulls—only girls commit mass suicide—
still in our school uniforms, we’ve so
often flooded our eyelids’ nether sides with air
like chilled ribbons around Kahlo’s bones.
Our cries have ample space to drift and clatter each
other on the bitten-off-doll-head
skin of them. I smell burnt rope, I am burnt
rope, I am disappointed. Don’t get cold,
depend on the swell of your skin—only girls
make perfect kindling—only girls make
perfect kindling, our pain is so special, we repeat.
Dorothy Lune is a Yorta Yorta poet & writer, born in Australia. Her poems have appeared in Overland journal, Mascara literary, & more. She runs "Ladybug Central" at dorothylune.substack.com.