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Sufficiency

Julia Tillinghast

I saw my father
I wanted him to take me home
I dropped my groceries
Into the parking lot
The parking lot
Was inky with rain
My inner music told me
To repeat myself
To hold on to the railing
To call his name
Until he wouldn’t come
& instead something
More self-suffcient would happen
The parking lot was ink
I dropped my groceries
My father came
But he did not know me
Every day
I wake as a child, the sky pushing me
Into the suit of an adult
Like a child pushing
Another child’s face down into water
That happened to me a lot you know
When I was a child
Another child wanting
To play at drowning me
It’s interesting now
Sometimes now when I think about
Being taken, I imagine being pushed
From the back of my skull
Into a bed
Where my mouth can feel
What it means universe where speech loses

What I never could do
I am now doing
What I never wanted
I now want

Contacts: Emily Wallis Hughes and Jason Zuzga at fence.fencebooks@gmail.com