Last summer I ate
spinach salads with
strawberry balsamic. I worked
body half-out
a fast-food window
& sold lukewarm chicken fingers.
I made piña coladas
in my best friend’s bedroom
stirred pineapple &
coconut with
the only fork we had
& we drank too much, sleeping
limb on limb
in her living room,
the extra bed, tipsy
& in platonic love. I drove
to work and back. I went on a date
& got home at one o’clock
& remembered their hands.
I paid too much
for bad coffee. We went to the Hoover Dam
& worried about the water
getting low, the earth
getting hotter. I spent the money
I made. I threw up
brown into my toilet. I counted
calories. I went
to San Diego & ate a caesar salad
in the airport. I slept on a couch.
I slept in a cabin & mice bit
the food, long teeth marks
on the peaches, on the
avocados, strips of green
exposed. I lost weight. I kissed
my cat on his fuzzy forehead.
I cut my hair. I stood
on a scale. I went
to the gynecologist. I laid
down on the Dr.’s cold
thin paper & waited too long
wishing her to say I was
a different person and went home
with her thumb still
inside me. Last summer
I ate spinach salads.
Katie Grierson believes in aliens. She is a 2020 YoungArts Finalist in Novel-Writing, was named a Presidential Scholar in the Arts Semifinalist, is an alumni of the Adroit Journal Summer Mentorship Program, and has been recognized by the Academy of American Poets as the 2022 Jean Burden Prize winner. Besides being prose editor for Lumiere Review, she also overuses the em dash and her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Body Without Organs and Dishsoap Quaterly, among others.