two headed boy...

with love, by madeleine

daddy please hear this song that i sing
in your heart there's a spark that just screams
for a lover to bring a child to your chest that could lay as you sleep
and love all you have left like your boy used to be
long ago wrapped in sheets warm and wet...

recent works...☆

I spent a month of my summer at my aunt and uncle’s house in Aptos, CA. While there, I took heaps of photos on the beach and on redwood hiking trails. I thought about a lot of different topics to focus on for this project under all three possible titles. Because of the amount of time I had spent by the sea, I figured maybe something marine-related could work. I also thought about the deers that come up to the back fence of my auntie’s garden who run faster than a whip whenever you approach. I thought about the banana slugs that litter the damp grounds in the early mornings which are such a staple of the area, they’re the UCSC mascot. I thought about the otters and the humpbacks and the crabs and the sharks and it all felt almost right for my project, but didn’t fit without forcing. So for about three weeks, I had no clue where I was going to take my project.

Less than 36 hours ago, at 8:30 a.m. on August 3rd, Monterey County emergency services were called to the 100 block of Struve Road in Moss Landing next to a strawberry field from reports that a dead infant had been found in the area. The report was quickly confirmed by fire personnel. There’s not yet any public information beyond these facts. We don’t know the baby’s cause of death, or even if an autopsy has been conducted. One of the strawberry pickers described that he “saw a lot of blood, and the umbilical cord was still attached.” This happened only a few miles from my auntie’s house.

I haven’t been able to stop thinking about this since I first saw it on the news last night. I can’t get the image out of my head. While the cause of death isn’t public, everyone has their theories for a case like this. Some people think the baby could’ve been stillborn, some people think it was murder plain and simple. I’m not really sure what to think.

I remember hearing a story about a teen mom who left her newborn in a mailbox. I don’t know if it’s true, since some kid at a summer camp told me about it when I was younger. I remember reading that 70,0000 women die from unsafe abortions worldwide. I remember that one time when I was probably about seven, I came home with a smiley-face sticker. It read “I’m glad my mom chose life.” I showed it to my mom with a big grin. She frowned and asked me what I thought it meant. I told her I was happy my mom stayed alive so that I could be alive. We threw the sticker in the trash after that. I remember the day Roe w. Wade was overturned. I remember how I cried on the phone with my friend because we didn’t know if her older sister would be able to make it out of Oklahoma to get an abortion. I remember wondering if my cousin would survive the birth of her second child while she was in labor for nearly two days. I remember being scared.

When I got my first period, I cried. I cried because I didn’t want to be a girl, and I cried because the only thing worse than being a girl, to me, was being a woman. It took a long time to be “okay” with being a girl. Even though I want to be fine with it, I still cry.

In all honesty, I had wanted to so something in conversation with womanhood and gender from the moment I received the theme, but I doubted where I could take it. I had gotten some unenthusiastic feedback when mentioning it to friends, which was pretty discouraging, but returning to it, I feel committed. To me, womanhood is the most organic thing there is. It’s the most natural thing in the world, yet we hide from it, cover it up in shame. Nevertheless, it persists.