Category: Her Body

  She is hunched on the exam table when I walk in, cradling her left arm in her right like a broken wing. Her hair russet brown, her skin almost transparent, eyes big and untrusting. I glance at the intake form. 19 years old. Pregnancies: 0. Here about: Birth control problem. “Ryan?” I pronounce her…

Flat on my back in bed, the covers pushed off to one side, my legs straight in front of me, my shoulders and rib cage sinking into the mattress. It is morning, the beginning of my routine. I start by resting my right thumb in the almond-sized depression at the base of my sternum, then…

The memory of watching my mother’s knees swaying in the hammock chair came from when I was six or seven years old. When I was not much older, maybe seven or eight, a family friend came to stay with my sister and me while my parents were out of town. (Presumably they were in Europe…

I am sprawled on the back deck, my sister beside me. We are girls. Our limbs are bony and brown, scraped knees, ashy elbows. T-shirts hang on us like ponchos. Beneath, our nipples are buttons on bed sheets pulled flat over our ribcages, our shoulders army corners, tight and square. On my thighs I feel…