tell us the story of your first period.
i was with my cousins visiting my grandma in california and i was only twelve so i had never gotten “the talk” before (i’ve never actually gotten the talk but that’s besides the point)
and i started BLEEDING
DOWN THERE
and i didn’t know what was going on and i was so nervous so i googled something like “bleeding” and the first thing that came up was hemorrhages and oh my god i thought i was going to die so i burst into my grandma’s room and i was screaming and crying and i was like “NANNA I’M GOING TO DIE I’M HEMORRHAGING” and honestly i was having a panic attack i felt like i was going to pass out and throw up
so then grandma had to give me the sex talk and she uSED A CUCUMBER AS A PROP IT WAS UTTERLY HORRIFYING i didn’t just learn about periods that day I LEARNED ABOUT SEX AND THREESOMES AND KINKS AND I LEARNED IT FROM MY LEFT WING GRANDMA and when i went back to new york i was a changed woman and i don’t think i can eat cucumbers the same way
yeah that’s the story of my first period
Tell us a story about eating weird food
one time i was at a native american festival with my mom as a young kid and they were selling some cool food there and one of the options was a BEAR SAUSAGE MADE OUT OF BEAR
and i was learning about nutrients in school and how food you ate turned into energy and for some reason i had this weird notion that if i ate the bear sausage i would get the energy of a bear and i begged my mom for that bear sausage and eventually she caved in and i ate it
and i just started running around because FINALLY I WAS A BEAST I WAS A WILD ANIMAL LIKE I ALWAYS WANTED and i rolled down a hill to prove my point to my mom and i rolled into a thornbush or something like that and it was bad and my mom had to take me home and put bandaids like over every square inch of my body
but yeah no you don’t turn into a bear when you consume their flesh
Tell a pet-related story
when i was in the second grade i broke my leg and maybe the week after my teacher announced that we were going to be hatching some chicks as a science project and keep them as class pets so my teacher got some chicken eggs and an incubator and after a while they hatched
and i noticed that one of the baby chicks had a gimpy leg and it was a black chick instead of yellow and fuzzy and i had dark hair so i saw it as a SIGN FROM GOD that I WAS THAT CHICK so i was like “oh that chick is me i’m going to name it marielle”
so after the chicks grew up a bit one of the kids took them home because their parents was a farmer and after a few weeks the mom came back into class and gave us a little update on the chicks and told us all they were doing well
and i piped up from the back “what about the black chick with the gimpy leg? how is that one doing?”
and the mom was like “oh that chick was pecked to death by the other chicks because it was different from the other chicks” and i took that as a sign from god that i’m a fucking freak of nature
Twirling Daisies
She gleans daisies because it reminds her of him. She sits at the coffee shop twirling its delicate stem and watching the petals glide onto the table, in a motion much like her heart, as the hours pass and he does not appear at the door she watches so intently. She continues to wait, and in an overstimulated state from too much caffeine, she changes her order to distilled water. This is her ritual every Friday afternoon. The staff call her “Patience.” Here is where they met; here is where they fell in love; here is where they parted ways. She often thought of never returning, but the walls are still seeped in their laughter and endless hours of verbal exchange in the form of childhood stories and their adoration for each other. She can still hear the conversation clearly amidst the atmosphere of clinking coffee mugs and the hushed murmur of blossoming love from the other patrons. He would bring her daisies when they would meet once a week for their ritualistic Friday afternoon coffee. It is the only flower she purchases now. She feels it would be a betrayal to look upon any other petal. It is the same reason she continues to return to this place. To go anywhere else would be a slap in the face of their time together and the bond they had formed which she thought would never disintegrate.
I wonder if I were to look through the window of this coffee shop 10 years from now on a random Friday afternoon if I would witness her sitting there, twirling a daisy and nursing her fourth coffee cup. How we hold onto hope to the point of never moving on. I nourish the vision of her twirling a rose one day and truly smelling it as she walks away.
