is coming of age.

for now, I’ll watch my birth control spiral
down the drain

good morning, my vices
good morning, dead flowers
hello to the salt and the heat

hello to the estrogen,
the extra estrogen
swimming through my bloodstream

I do this for you, for me, for us.

hello future daughter!
you starseed, you dandelion, you
I am your half, your mirror, your fate

so tell me,
do the walls of your mind
look at all like mine? is the paint
chipped? Do you feel
confused and seduced
by the bottom layer?

is its color a shade you cannot describe?

I will teach you to read
the color of that wall
I will show you how to sift
through the knot of your loneliness,
teach you how I find comfort
in its strange textures

as the color fills your pale hands.

you tell me how you wish
your hands weren’t so full,
‘how can something invisible
carry so much weight?’

nevermind all that!

tell me about the clouds
that tempt you
tell me about the drugs
you try
we can sit in a pile of sugar
and talk about desire,
its stitches and valleys and ropes

we can speak about our hormones –
my inevitable pause, and
the estrogen, the extra estrogen,
swimming through your bloodstream.

when your favorite words
in the english language become

“I understand,”

we can sleep in the rain,

find a puddle to float our heavy heads,
become the flowing water that our bodies
wish to be

somewhere, we can cry in the bathtub
and watch the pills spiral
down the drain.

Audrey Valentine Weisburd is a writer from Austin based in New York. She studied film and creative writing at Syracuse University and is an incoming nonfiction MFA candidate at Columbia. Her writing can be found in Expat Press, Maudlin House, Flaunt, Paste, and Impulse Magazine. Audrey likes to explore themes of technology, love, dreams, connection and disconnection.

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