Jane-Rebecca Cannarella

In response to a text that said what else could I have done?

I've wet bedsheets with blood from stagnated piercings; middle-of-the-night fugitive weight. Earlier I was a monster, with no action as my only other option. I didn't know how to yell no at the time or that giving gifts of puncture wounds in that moment would hurt worse than the lightning scrambling through my body raising the hair on my arms and neck. Later at night, existing outside myself, the storms subsided absorbed by the bed. I imagined the mattress as soil, and the blood as springtime sun showers; and maybe one day, somewhere else, potions of puncture wounds will feed others. And then, I will become a gardener growing again.

Jane-Rebecca Cannarella (she/her) is a writer and editor living in Philadelphia. She is the editor of HOOT Review and Meow Meow Pow Pow Lit, and a former genre editor at Lunch Ticket. Jane-Rebecca is the author of Better Bones and Marrow, both published by Thirty West Publishing House, The Guessing Game published by BA Press, Thirst and Frost from Vegetarian Alcoholic Press, A Practical Almanac for Surviving Inside the Human Body from Bottlecap Press, and Eleven-Hundred forthcoming from Really Serious Literature.

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