Volume I
S H E D W E L L S W I T H B E A U T Y
Best Viewed While Listening To Any Of These Songs: Carissa’s Wierd - “Die” Janet Jackson - “This Time” Pretty Girls Make Graves - “Sad Girls Por Vida” Lianne La Havas - “Lost & Found”
—beauty that must die
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NYE The last week of the last year I felt small, then big, but mostly trapped in skin; I ate well. I smiled a lot. I fucked. I fucked up. I said sorry I was drunk. I cried outside your door. You told me to not leave marks; I did anyway. On the last day before the end of the year, I called maman. She said Someone’s setting off dynamite. Rome’s on fire. I love you, kiddo. I love you too. I’m a lot like Rome. A great city that’s burned down but was ruined by tourists. Some parts of me are going under water but that’s okay. I’m still here.
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—beauty that must die
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Infinite Matter Do you think the universe wished it was tiny? That instead of multitudes, it contained infinite less. Maybe it remembers when it used to. Can you imagine that one day It woke up like Gregor Samsa and realized it’d changed impossibly. It was growing rapidly. The sound of celestial flesh expanding, comets shooting across the flesh like spider veins, black matter cellulite jjggling. The universe is tired. Here comes another ripple of supernovas. She screams. No one hears her. Astronomers, physicists, stargazers all love the universe’s body; ever changing and constant. So many gaze upon many folds sighs real universes have curves. Big, beautiful universe. The universe awaits death.
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—beauty that must die
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I am the cartographer. I am the uncharted country. I will make you a map. You will come to me A small disclaimer: Every year, it seems, I remember something from my childhood that was otherwise forgotten, repressed. Sometimes I like to think my childhood was happy, but that’s an entirely different story. Sometimes I contact my birth mother and ask her to confirm or deny something to the best of her ability. She was often high and I was, well, busy repressing so together we make a fetching team to put it together. Even as a kid watching the tv show Fact or Fiction, I was never a good judge of what was farfetched and what was real. I’m not sure of anything, neither is she, but every year, I wake up, and sometimes think, Boy, I’m fucked. And sometimes there’s a boy next to me and he thinks I’m being clever. Hardly the case. Often there’s no one and I’m alone, eyes opening only to rub sleep against the cotton of my Strawberry Shortcake pillowcase. I’m sure I’d get fucked more if I didn’t tell men, boys that I’m going to describe the way they came on my blog. If I didn’t tell them that I might cry before, after, during, tomorrow. I’m sure I’d get fucked more if I wasn’t a machine. I’m just a girl processor with flawed mechanics.
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—beauty that must die
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I am the cartographer. I am the uncharted country.
I will make you a map. You will come to me. I was named after my mother’s lover Jeanette. One of my earliest memories is Jeanette disarming my mother who exclaimed that she was sick of it all. She waved a gun and I waved back. Jeanette pulled her close “Let it go.” Jeanette held her down. I don’t know much about rocket science. I do know that the women in my family are in desperate need of strong arms, open hands and therapy. I ran to the bathroom. Grabbed a bottle of Clorox. I’m going to clean this all up. Maybe this mess ends with me. I won’t become someone with a taste for devestation. I was born desperate. I’ll die desperate. Maybe I’m a failure. Maybe I’m a winner. My tombstone won’t read 1989-1994. I’m lucky, I guess. I write about tragedies because it’s my American right; if you feel a little less alone, then the pursuit of happiness is over. I sing of the amber grains, the rotted wood in the slave ships, of my mother sobbing over me. Repeat after me:
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We will never be free.
—beauty that must die
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sylvia plath’s burnt cookies (mother knows best) mother said i had to learn how to let things go then without warning pushed my head under water until the mr. bubble bath scrubbed my brain, my lungs nails too soft to scratch, eyes rolled back brown body shipwrecked later mother toweled me off with a redskins towel said grab the comb and blue magic to braid my hair. letting go is sacrifice not everyone is capable of. mother dragged me from the tub, blew air into my chest screaming no, no, no.
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—beauty that must die
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Tornado Watch: I’m an unhinged door Splintering mahogany 
 Weathering the storm
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—beauty that must die
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living nightmare some mornings i awake cold eyelids reluctant dawn’s rosy fingers pale and pruned sunlight spunks against my lips memory and reality blending mornings like this awake rigor mortis stiff still with hands around my neck ten years later paralyzed by the familiarity my body misses the routine do you ever think how cruel it is for lambs to learn it is not the wolf who is cruel but the farmer that raised them. your nails are in my scalp can smell your shadow hear you shutting the door awake with no confidence in your departure
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—beauty that must die
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This page is dedicated to the men and women who ruined my life. In turn, I dedicate this page to myself for sticking it out but also for contributing to ruin. Thank you all for haunting me. Thank you for keeping me up at night. Thank you all for fucking up my genetics. Thank you for making my childhood a living myth and a real nightmare. Someone, somewhere, at some point hurt you so badly that you grew up to be the sort of person who fed on little girls, on me. I feel bad for you. I mostly feel bad for me. I dedicate this page to you and I wish you well. I hope someone caught you ruining another life, your own or another, and beat you to death. I also hope they held you. I hope they told you it’ll be okay. I hope you stay hydrated and eat leafy green vegetables. I hope, if there is a hell, a place worse than Earth, that I’ll see you there. I’ll watch you burn.
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—beauty that must die
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Kelly, J is a survivor. Kelly, J is 24. Kelly, J lives in Baltimore. the.importance.of.being.kelly@gmail.com
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