Living Room
By Kristin Ryan
It's #tbt! Enjoy this great one from SWWIM Every Day's archives!
She is bruised by sunlight. Uncertain hands move towards a tea cup full of grapes. She remembers it being easier this way. Bowls are simply too much: they can trick you into filling them— what if you can’t stop— Listen: sometimes a girl can’t eat, becomes afraid of kitchens and knives. The way the air presses skin, through blood into bone, into the marrow. No, it’s better to stay here in the living room where blues and yellows weep from the starry nights, the sunflowers, the wheat fields on the walls. She wonders if this room will become her wheat field— if his face will become her gun.
Kristin Ryan is a poet and essayist working towards healing, and full sleeves of tattoos. She is a recipient of the 2017 Nancy D. Hargrove Editor's Prize in Poetry, and her work has been nominated for Best New Poets, Best of the Net, and the Pushcart Prize. Her poems and essays have been featured in Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Jabberwock Review, Anti-Heroin Chic, Moonchild Magazine, Serotonin Lit, and SWWIM Every Day among others. She holds an MFA from Ashland University.
02/13 / Poetry Reading and Conversation with visiting poet-in-residence Alafia Sessions + local writer Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello / The BBar at The Betsy-South Beach, Miami Beach, FL / Live and Live-Streamed on Instagram Live/Facebook Live at @swwimmiami / 7-8:30 pm EST / Free
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Heartbreaking and beautiful.