the patron saint of strawberry lemonade & weird earrings

Wanda Deglane, United States

I practice self love 

like a fist cracking against drywall.

I have no knack for self compassion,

but I buy myself earrings shaped like

mushrooms and it feels close to 

the same thing. I want to be as beautiful

as a doe lying sweetly in a flower field,

as functional as the bullet whizzing 

through her eye. I want to feel so strong,

so sure, instead of petals in a hurricane

or gas station corndogs. I want to be so

soft, so good, but I’m eggshells crumpling

into cake batter. I split the sorrow from 

my body and feel its absence like 

a phantom limb. self love, it turns out,

is just Monday morning breakfast, just 

clean teeth and bloody gums, but it feels 

like a ten car pile up, like crawling through 

mirror shards. I practice good posture as if 

I’m someone who knows a thing or two. 

I practice self-forgiveness as if I’m something 

gentle enough to be held in mother arms.

Semisweet, I wax more than I wane. I ripen 

more than I rot. I pull depression from 

the bags under my eyes and watch it slip 

glittering down the drain. I hold myself like

a new lover, take all this self love into my bone

marrow. I practice believing it’ll stay inside me,

not seep out of my wounds. I practice hoping,

hoping, hoping, and it passes through my skin,

candescent as sunlight, full to the brim with

something I can’t yet name. 

Wanda Deglane is a poet and therapist from Arizona. She has written Melancholia (VA Press, 2021) and other books.