Tara Stillions Whitehead
this is how you calculate infinity how you get different results by doing the same
thing over and over how you remain dizzy long after the spinning stops how
you begin living after a lifetime contemplating death
here is where to point your finger when you want to blame God for something
how to hold a fired gun accountable how to settle for less so that you can make
room for more
these are the pills you take when you want to become a new person these are the
pills you take when you want to find the old one these are the places to touch
when you stop feeling like yourself, or when you’re contemplating those bottles of
vanilla or mouthwash
this is how to listen when no one is talking how to start a fire without dryer lint or
light bulbs how to unwrap a wound you didn’t know was a wound how to not die
trying
here are the ingredients for the perfect storm the hiding places where you can lose
yourself
this is how to unlock your front door on days when the world is going to
end how to wear hope inside out like a shirt that isn’t yours
this is how you open a child’s chest and vacuum the glitter out this is how you fill
a child with the world they will have to fix this is how you collect the broken glass
when a child’s work is done—how you teach broken glass to make a window how
you teach broken glass to make a mirror
this is how you use a window to learn from the past how you use a mirror to see
the future
here is how to wade through an ocean that isn’t yours how to live in the sunlight
without casting shadows how to interpret your grandmother’s tongues
this is how to love the child who came from blood muscle this is how to love the
child who came from that space between loneliness and urge this is how to love
the child who is rotten before the harvest and hollowed of seed—how children from
broken geometries find their own symmetry outside of circles and spheres and
other well-rounded objects
this is how you get the laces even on the first try how to turn your desire into land
and your body into prayer
this is how to stay clean when there is no water how to pray when there is no one
awake
here is how to read between lines that are neither fine nor oblique lines without
knots or surface tension lines too heavy, cast too deep
here is the word you were looking for the sentence without the metaphor the
lover you never fucked.
here is how to write indeterminately how to bury an unfinished story before it
becomes a story
how to forgive yourself for not wanting it to end
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Tara Stillions Whitehead is a writer, professor, and filmmaker from California. Her work can be found in a variety of journals, closets, drawers, notebooks, and film/TV vaults, including cream city review, The Rupture, Monekybicycle, PRISM international, and Jellyfish Review. An avid runner and Jason Isbell fan, she lives in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, with her family and cats.
