PERSONAL ESSAY WITH HEART EMOJIS

Roseanna Alice Boswell

I want to write a dissertation on gender politics but what 26 y.o. girl/woman hasn’t? There is nothing new I could say about the words my male colleagues use & the bodies of women they keep finding in the river near my apartment. I just think everything is connected because I’m too close. I just take everything a little too personally. I’m just overly-worried about commodification even though

I think I’ll start pasting my mother’s wedding photo into all of my poems. Gluestick appendage her better traits onto mine. I am too angry to be a good daughter. Just ask my brother. Just read my mother’s mind. This is why my mother’s dress fit me perfectly when I was 12 & never after. Resentment will fill you out. Give you hips & premature crows’ feet. I have the largest cup size of all my sisters.

I cried so hard through Gerwig’s Ladybird & then Little Women because I know what it’s like to relate to someone so much & also wish we were them so badly. Look, we’re doing it now––I know you’re thinking about which March sister you are.  I seem really together for my age because I’m getting married but once I had a panic attack because my fiancé might want babies & I might fuck them up. This is overly dramatic but

I tell everyone I want to take an art class––all I mean is that I bought some felt tip markers at Target. All I mean is I drew a red-heart-birth in the center of the page & labeled it “mine.” I might sell it on Etsy. I might try to frame it on somebody else.