‘Typical’, ‘Monsieur’ & ‘Duplex (Dead Weight)’
Clara Gillin is a rising artist, photographer and writer- as well as highschooler balancing her time with school work and many extra curriculars. She doesn't shy away from challenges, starting multiple of her own clubs and managing top grades while exploring her interests. After winning a district-wide writing contest, she's submitted to many different artists’ outlets in hopes of being discovered and sharing her art with the world.
Typical
Do typical women hate their breasts?
Do they wish to be vascular?
Do they look at their male coworker,
built like a statue of a Greek god,
and only yearn to have broad shoulders?
Are their days ruined when reminded
that they’ll never have facial hair
or a flat chest under a t-shirt?
Are they eggs that crack every six months,
finding the same fortune cookie note inside each time only to fuse their shells back together with doubt?
Do they ask questions they know the answers to then play dumb even to their internal monologues, emphasize the breadth of the gender spectrum, ignore twinges and raw wantings
in the men’s section of department stores
because their parents wouldn’t love them the same if they allowed the name they want
to be the one they use?
Do women typically want to be boyfriends and brothers? Do they imagine male lives in all their daydreams? Are their days defined by the pieces of their beings unshown and consequently unseen, yet never unfelt?
Do women typically wish they were typical women?
Monsieur
I saw your photo and teared up. Perhaps you know what I mean? When you find a photo from that early time in life where emotions are prepared in bulk? When the student discount still applies? Before we learned hard lessons about HR and the HOA and the CDC, we probably slept at night. You should know what I did with the French you taught me. When I was twenty and lonely, taking a train from Lyon to Paris, I flirted with a beautiful woman. Her hair reminded me of sunlight on straw in a flashback scene from a film I never saw. She thought my use of the hiking water bladder on the train was funny, and I said I liked the Monster energy drink flavor she held. I arched my eyebrow in a way no one taught me and took years to unlearn. She left the train, and I sighed like my breaths could flutter after her. I bought myself a croque monsieur and a pastry for my first birthday alone. I went to sleep cherry-sick and empty, wondering if I would find a purpose before I woke up. How sweet I was to sleep at all. I saw your photo and remembered how I interrogated you about why you hadn’t married your boyfriend, though the law now permitted it. It reminds me of the students who ask me why I don’t have a boyfriend. Or a girlfriend! they hurriedly correct. You said that you liked to choose him every day, not just on your wedding day. I hope to one day wake up decisive. In the time between those years you made me laugh and this moment where your memory pushes tears from my eyes, I imagine you gained all the certainty I lost, looming over my misuses of French like a Julia Reagan billboard. Now my bed is close to the ground, and where the glad memories once filled me they rather carve me out. I let them, remembering the word arrêtez but not bothering to speak, knowing I won’t sleep without complete silence.
Duplex (Dead Weight)
Waking up reminds me there is violence in love.
I set my clocks on fire to start the day.
Once enough time burns, I come back home.
A diseased home is still your responsibility.
Diseases are guests at the table.
A visitor is a metaphor for God.
God burnt his guests for enjoying the sunshine. Do our battle scars entitle us to warmth?
Our battle scars keep us lonely.
I want to hold someone’s pelvis, know its weight.
My pelvis sleeps with open eyes, dead weight. I wish with the blinds drawn for privacy.
My wishes die in holy wars I surrender. It showed me the love in violence.
Val Margolius is a researcher and a fan of black licorice. Their work can be found in Last Leaves Magazine and Willows Wept Review.
