Andrea Giedinghagen

In Tatters if Need Be

Remember those humid Kansas City summer nights
the summer before senior year
when we’d drive through the empty streets
under the sodium vapor streetlights
that tinged everything that tired yellow
hands out the windows, fingers trailing through
the early morning air that felt electric
chain smoking and listening to the Beastie Boys
with the confidence that some benevolent goddess
occasionally bestows on seventeen year old girls
During that witching hour,
neither night nor morning really,
too late to be late,
too early for early

Remember looking out over the skyline
(such as it was) how it felt like the world
was panting at our feet, or could be
with hay-sweet sweat
plastering our shirts to our backs
even at three a.m.
and the distant lights
twinkling like the rhinestones
on a cowgirl’s shirt at the American Royal
or a drag queen’s gown at Missie B’s
(though we didn’t know that yet—didn't know yet
we'd want to know it, shut our eyes tight and tried
to forget in advance)

Remember how that city
felt like a shirt grown too tight,
an old skin that we couldn’t wait to shed
(whole or in tatters if need be)
not because anywhere else was better
but to escape the heat and stifle of staying
where you grew up for too long,
where every place you go is somewhere already:
the library where you worked your first job
the church hall where you had your first kiss
or first despaired of being gay
or first lied to a priest
(sins of omission are sins
all the same)

Remember it as the home
that loved us so hard
(hard like a tooth on concrete,
            like bone meeting bone)
loved us so hard we fled, hoping never to be loved
like that again
and as we ran we promised
we’d never look back
   and now look at us

looking back
God,
looking back.

Andrea Giedinghagen is a lesbian poet and painter from Missouri living with disability. Her work explores themes of grief, embodiment and desire. She revels in building new worlds within formal constraints (corralling pantoums, sestinas and other tricky beasts). Her work has recently appeared in Cetera, The Bellevue Review, Calyx, and others, and is forthcoming in Neon & Smoke, Blood Orange Review and The Healing Muse.