The girl next to me is me
and she shakes out a laugh the same way
she rattles a can of spraypaint
I say nothing she gleams like wine
on a parishioner’s lips like a dog bowl
licked clean a paw is placed
on the thickening glass of his heart
he has never felt so close to Death each night
It turns in Its pew to stare at him but he can’t
bring himself to look the girl next to me
is Josie and each time she bites my nipple
she tells me it’s not a sin not yet as the eye
in my teacher’s knee opens
wider as she squeezes my neck
and the strange botany of my womb
blows its dark flowers
like bubblegum Eve’s birth marked the death
of innocence my teacher says and I know
he wants me to be afraid
because of how closely he stands the long, unlit
street in his voice stilling Josie opens familiar
bruises across my body
like a prayer book is it a sin
I ask the girl next to me as the men
turn in their seats as the sky swaddles
the moon like a stillbirth as Josie slits open
my belly, full of hair look she says
and I do
–
Kindall Fredricks (she, her) is a practicing registered nurse and poet from Conroe, Texas. She earned her MFA at Sam Houston State University and her work has appeared in New Letters, Grist, Passages North, Boulevard, North American Review, The Academy of American Poets, and more.