There is a certain morbid satisfaction in
the realization of something terrible.
The longer my sadness sat, the more i
found it twisting,
mutating
my loneliness sat for so long that it turned
into rage; a desperate hunger;
the ravenous desire to sink my teeth into
Life and feel
the hot blood red juice run down my chin,
pool in my collarbones
stain my skin.
I don’t want to call it white hot
-such a cliche-
but it is, it is white hot,
blistering,
My skin, that effervescent armor,
the thing that makes me real.
Turns cold, liquid mind to warm, solid flesh.
I am so worried that this rage
is ruining it.
Twisting in on itself and taking away my
power even as it cements it-
for what is the closing scene of girlhood,
if not this.
Josephine Howe would not consider herself a writer. She loves to sing, she loves to
cook with her best friend, she loves to walk in the woods around her small
Massachusetts town, and she also loves to write. A sophomore in high school,
Josephine hopes to continue to explore and shape her world through art as long as she
can. She has honestly never shown her poetry to anyone before. This is her first publication.