Confession: I LOVE Halloween. Love it. I’d like to share with you what I’m sure will be the first of several costumes. I wore this one tonight (Friday night), to the Halloween a capella concert and the afterparty. I was dressed as zombie Marina Abromavic, or Marina Azombavic, if you will. Art history puns are perhaps the only thing I feel naturally talented at. Everything else has come through arduous labor and probably after a lot of time lying on the floor of the Lusty Cup complaining loudly to the longsuffering and supportive patrons of said Cup.

Other than going to the a capella concert, I also went to the Self-Love Open Mic hosted by the Body Image Council and co-sponsored by Fem-Co and Sisterhood. I’ve been trying to do things every day that scare me a little bit, respecting my boundaries while pushing to expand my comfort zone. In the spirit of this effort, I read a poem at the open mic that I’d like to share here:

The Things I Carried

for three days during which i did not shower

i carried a rose petal in my ill-fitting Target brassiere

the rose was significant, i had thought, i can’t tell you why now

for a full minute i carried a cherry pit

wedged between my left breast and my underwire

i spent this minute digging through flesh, blushing,

wishing that cherry pit hadn’t been so slippery

i carried a seething mass of expanding and shrinking flesh,

infected like a tiny planet

carried it in my face for a full year until

a man replaced it with dead gold

every day i carry tube after tube of

fire and ice

cherries in the snow

siren

and i carry it alone