Bridget O’Bernstein

Princess

​Katy leans forward, the room dark behind her. The black door to my room is shut. She tells me, It’s never going to feel any different than this. I lean my head back against the burned raspberry bed frame. I look up at her. I say, I don’t think I can. She tells me I don’t have to.
          I see a child squeak down a silver slide in winter. Her powder purple sneakers bang together. She gets up, touches her mama’s back in the middle. Mama turns. Mama hasn’t fallen down the stairs yet. Mama’s face is unscarred. There is blank white skin where there will be mulberry bruises & sixty yellow stitches that look like wire.
        I begin to tug at my hair. I tug my hair out by its threads. Katy stays with me. I tug them out. Some are yellow but mostly they are brown & black & silver. She braids them into rope. I tug them out by the fistful. Katy braids them into a rope faster than I can tug them out of me & throws the rope out my window. 
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Madness

I get mad at Katy. The mountains grow spiny blue in the distance. I tell her I am mad because I love her. Children in Tennessee fall from a Ferris Wheel, their gilt braids flying upwards. She nods, lets me go. I go rocketing off into the sky. My anger carries me not very far. I buy a bag of bread & a box of toothpicks. I buy a rocking chair. I come back to Katy, holding them out. She takes them & takes me in.
          We go to a party that night dressed all in black. We could be any age here, but we are older. I lean over Katy with an apple in my mouth, offering it to her. She moves to bite it out of my mouth, extends her long white neck. Her black beads swing down with a noise like falling water. The moment where we are both locked on to the fruit, I can hear her heart beating in the apple.

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Bridget O’Bernstein is from Brooklyn where she runs a poetry reading series called Sang for Nothing. She is an MFA candidate for poetry at Syracuse University, where she is the Assistant Poetry Editor for Salt Hill. Her poems have been published in Black Heart Magazine, Forklift, Ohio and are forthcoming in The McNeese Review.