The twins who found the dead body in the river
stopped coming to school for the last weeks of 5th grade.
We rode our bicycles to the pay phone,
dialed their number, swore we smelled their father's
cigar smoke through the receiver. They never came out. By July,
they became a ghost story we told the younger children;
how the river swallowed their voices, dulled
their eyes into two dry stones. All summer,
we swam in pools, reveled in the clear chlorine.
The twins returned for the first day of sixth grade
as if back from the dead. Their breasts had unwrapped
themselves from under their skin. Their legs: no longer
childish planks. We tried not to stare, to whisper.
They sat alone at lunch and we gossiped of what happens to girls
who looked like women. That night, one by one,
we snuck out of our homes, unplanned, to swim naked
in the river, to baptize the closed rosebuds of our nipples,
to float amongst corpses, to drown the child in us.
stopped coming to school for the last weeks of 5th grade.
We rode our bicycles to the pay phone,
dialed their number, swore we smelled their father's
cigar smoke through the receiver. They never came out. By July,
they became a ghost story we told the younger children;
how the river swallowed their voices, dulled
their eyes into two dry stones. All summer,
we swam in pools, reveled in the clear chlorine.
The twins returned for the first day of sixth grade
as if back from the dead. Their breasts had unwrapped
themselves from under their skin. Their legs: no longer
childish planks. We tried not to stare, to whisper.
They sat alone at lunch and we gossiped of what happens to girls
who looked like women. That night, one by one,
we snuck out of our homes, unplanned, to swim naked
in the river, to baptize the closed rosebuds of our nipples,
to float amongst corpses, to drown the child in us.
![[De] pressed](https://img.youlistener.com/upl2/public/666/6a3/bee/9MUwqzvmIYc.jpg)
![Ameri - Weatherman (Outro) (Prod. Vitals) [OFFICIAL AUDIO]](https://img.youlistener.com/upl2/public/666/4b1/01c/fRlMxWAicJs.jpg)
Comments