It took me until I was thirty five to
love my body enough to listen
and Believe her when
she told me "no" with her smallest voice
in her biggest time
to let her unfold and fold
wrinkled and rolled
sober
into fits of laughter
to hold her gently when she
cried
to imagine uninhibition
Ravishing
in the beauty of enough
large and containing
multitudes I stopped biting my
fingernails to the quick
catching blood drops on my tongue
while smiling
I let the skin stretched home of my
infants breathe all the way in
until she is full
I…
Happy 13th Birthday
As I start my van this morning, The Waterboys “The Whole of the Moon,” floods the speakers. He looks at me, dimple catching the light, eyes sparkling, and launches into the lyrics with me, lungs open, windows cracked.
“I pictured a rainbow
You held it in your hands,”
For thirteen years, this morning, nearly every morning, I’ve woke to his cries or his laughter, his voice in my ears. It’s happened, this morning, I am caught up in the great race of his childhood. How are we thirteen?
“You stretched for the stars And you know how…
Two different men. Same monster.
200 or more photos of naked women, many very young, found on personal devices. Five massage therapists, under his employment, reported that he had touched or rubbed them inappropriately, and four said he would touch his own genitals or ask them to touch him. Eight said he would either start the massage completely nude or remove the draping sheets during the treatment. “Don’t tell,” he’d remind them. “My downfall would cost millions of souls a chance at eternity.”
Women are great at don’t tell.
Different stories from different women, many very young, spanning the length…
I’m tracing the lines between an evangelical childhood and the radical events of January 6th.
I don’t remember growing up entrenched in politics but I remember that I said the Pledge of Allegiance just before the pledge to the Christian flag. I don’t remember knowing anyone who wasn’t a Christian, didn’t appreciate traditional family values, didn’t believe in taking the message of Jesus to the world, and didn’t vote Republican because after all, in homeschool culture in rural Kentucky, these are all one and the same.
I don’t remember being told about the electoral college but I do remember being told that God Himself ordained the President and that we should pray endlessly for His…
When I was twelve I gained 40 pounds and shot up six inches. In a short period of time I went from the smallest girl in my gymnastics class to the tallest, the heaviest. All limbs and hips and midsection with no core strength and no coordination, everything about the familiar gym, my athletic and activity home for five years, seemed stark and unfamiliar. I couldn’t flip around the bars with any rhythm, lost my ability to tumble, and the splits sent me into hysterical tears. I took more bathroom breaks than I did runs down the trampolined runway …
Oh! Hey! Remember last year? I compared the year 2019 to a dry and awful blow job and I was SPOT ON and then 2020 hit, all salivated and hopeful and guess what motherfuckers? WORSE.
Fuck.
I don’t like to swear because my mother raised me not to. I don’t like to swear because someone once told me it was a sign of an unsubstantial vocabulary. I don’t like to swear because my kids (very occasionally) listen to me and yet…. did you live this year? Are there any other words? There are no other words.
And yet — when…
(Disclaimer.)
(Nevermind.)
(I do not need to be disclaimed.)
“You’re a good writer. But everything you write is better out loud.”
Fine.
Here.
#metoo is trending
and I’m trying to decipher the pangs and chills that
rumble my stomach and run up my spine
because I have been told that I overshare
that I’m too loud and
that people do not want to bear witness
to my trauma
when they have enough of their own
Me, fifteen, only wrote poetry
sentences were too hard, too much
they take all of the wind and words out of you
and they have…
Natalie LaFrance Slack
I keep an inventory. Of wonders. www.natalielafranceslack.com and www.verbstorytelling.com
