I no longer need stacks of fading tissue paper, egg shaped rattles, glitter, every shell I’ve ever found; I want to take them back. I no longer need the books about the hero’s journey, all the books about how to be better than I am. I no longer need leather scraps, boxes of zippers, porcelain doll parts, empty glass tubes, rusted metal pieces found at the railroad tracks. I no longer need the gothic bird cage that Paul put a lamb’s heart and some deer ribs inside of. I no longer need any cages or hearts or bones that are not inside my body.
Jennifer Lothrigel is a poet and artist in the San Francisco Bay area. She is the author of Pneuma (Liquid Light Press, 2018), Wormhole Weaver (self published, 2022), and Secret Futures (Bottlecap Press, 2023.) Her work has also been published in Phoebe Journal, Arcturus, Dash Literary Journal, and Adanna Journal, amongst others.