Baby ballerinas skipped to Tchaikovsky,
fine threads of hair crowning their heads and my hair, so tightly pulled into a knot my forehead quivered.
How freely they moved, loudly and with pride and I, repentant for my nine-year old hips, the way my thighs joined at their fullest.
A parade of girls twirled in their violet skirts, munched on snacks waiting for a call-back. I married my bones to the wall, stomach concave, all of me, deflated, reducing my untried bones— readied my body for battle.
Jessica Sabo is a first-year MBA student and poet whose work focuses on the intersection between mental illness, trauma, and sexuality. Her poems have appeared in Rogue Agent Journal, Coffin Bell Journal, and Adelaide Literary Magazine, among others. She has been published in anthologies with ChannelMarker Literary Journal, Adelaide Literary Magazine, and Damaged Goods Press. In 2020, Jessica was named a finalist for the Adelaide Literary Award in Poetry and was a semi-finalist for a Brooklyn Poets Fellowship. She currently lives in Orlando with her wife and two rescue dogs. Her first chapbook, A Body of Impulse, was recently published by dancing girl press.
A graduate of York University in Toronto, Stephen Ground's photography has appeared in Memoir Magazine, Reservoir Road Literary Review, Minute Magazine, and elsewhere. Find more at stephenground.com.
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