I am way too good at keeping secrets from myself. I am my chosen name, hanging at the end of your question. I am my grandmother’s granddaughter, despite the obituary on the fridge. I am done turning the lights off before I get undressed every night. I am hanging Christmas lights around my room to make everything calm. I am getting better at texting my friends back. I am trimming my armpits before the party. I am tired and stoned and my stomach feels like TV static. I am drinking more water. I am yes, and but not yes, but. I am standing in the mirror in my bra and boxers, studying my changes: I am softening cheeks and hard stubble, I am small breasts on a wide ribcage. I am trying to figure out if it’s better for things to be too short or too long: conversations, friendships, semesters, nights. I am rolling a tire down the steepest street in my childhood. I am practicing my future signature. I am finding my voice on the long way home.
***
Robin Arble is a poet and writer from Western Massachusetts. Her poems and prose have appeared or are forthcoming in beestung, Midway Journal, One Art, Overheard Magazine, Roi Fainéant Press, and Your Impossible Voice, among others. She studies literature and creative writing at Hampshire College.
***
image: MM Kaufman
Rejection Letters 