swifts  &  s l o w s · a quarterly of crisscrossings

dance until her feet fall off
Christina Polge

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My body is a dangerous space of love and rage (Or why I am reading queer anarchist
theory on a Saturday night)

there is a girl made of blood and dust
bullets and bones
she is not me yet
she is not me anymore
it’s confusing for me too
but i am trying
to understand her better
i owe her that much

i’ve been speaking to her
through academic papers on revenge
and movies about feminine rage
and layers and layers of skin
p e e l e d back
to find her
raw and red

she has been screaming
and i want to comfort her somehow
tell her it will be all right, hug her
but that would mean hugging myself
making my head habitable
i am not brave enough for that

so instead i focus on understanding
a girl that is desperate to be understood
she is begging to be wanted
in a way where you don’t
have to beg at all

and that is where i forget
whether i am trying to understand
her or me

i don’t know

how to be gentle with myself
so i am trying to be gentle with her
but she won’t listen

she wants to
kill all the dinosaurs
drown a million flowers
dance until her feet fall off
burn the cherry orchard down

she is just like her mother, just like her father
(just like me)

i wonder if she believes in marriage
if she makes up impossible scenarios to fall asleep
if she sings in the shower
if she gets flustered around pretty girls
if i should be using the past tense instead

i listen when she speaks
i hear her telling herself stories
she needs to believe

she is a hero, a villain
a savior, a victim
she has the same inferiority-god complex
i see when i look in the mirror

i have tried meeting her
in my childhood bedroom
in the passenger seat of strangers’ cars
in the songs about dying
in the paintings of sunflowers
in the bottom of a cereal bowl

and i catch a glimpse of her
and she grabs me by the shoulders
before disapppearing
it makes me feel so much i spill out of myself
and she spills out of me

beyond right and wrong, there is a field
i will meet her there
i will ask her why it had to be this way
she will not have an answer
maybe God or something like that
i don’t know much about God but i know
it isn’t her and it isn’t me
but for her, it has to be something
i will give her that

i want to tell her
i do understand
but i cannot explain

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Christina Polge is an undergraduate at UNC-Chapel Hill studying English and journalism. When not writing poetry, she enjoys belting out showtunes in her car, hosting board game nights and frolicking in meadows with her friends. Her work has appeared in Pinesong published by the North Carolina Poetry Society, Just Above Water published by Voyage YA, The Albion Review, The Allegheny Review and The Auvert Magazine. She is a big fan of niche Spotify playlists.