Head Start

When she said she wanted a head start she meant I pulled
my stitches out with my teeth. That’s one way to move
out of state: load up the moving truck, call the kids from a payphone

Yours was the other way, adrift without a goodbye
The drawl of your aaaah’s, cacophonous Lawd!
Grief in the rear-view but also the backseat

Sometimes I think I’d like to do some leaving too, a tangle of metal
on metal but I’m the only one with a set of keys, the mess of
loving until someone has to lock up or say I’m gonna miss you

Rhienna Renèe Guedry (@chouchoot) is a queer writer and artist who found her way to the Pacific Northwest, perhaps solely to get use of her vintage outerwear collection. Her work has been featured in Empty Mirror, HAD, Oyster River Pages, Bitch Magazine, Screen Door, and elsewhere. Rhienna is currently working on her first novel.

… return to Issue 13.2 Table of Contents.