Author: Madison Gulli-Callaghan

I look for you everywhere,
running around our streets as if
the concrete carousel was the Garden of Eden,
but I've tripped and painted my knees the colors of fallen leaves or rotted fruit:
dark reds, deep browns and dusty greens.

I have sought you since we were Adam and Eve.
So I’ll justify your judgments if you’ll love me Leviathan.
I will bend like a pliable prayer 
if you promise me that I will be more than altar or offering.

If it’s me versus sanity,
I’ll compose a hymn in tongues and 
beg God to make me your wishbone,
one quixotically carved from the rib I was born from.

I’ll gnaw to be close and 
bleed to be believed and 
burn to be seen as divine, and 
you may consider me crazy, but my book is about love 
despite writing it with a clenched fist.

Remember how men transcribed the bible in the blood of others and
women loved the good word so much they helped rewrite history to 
glorify goosebumps they received by men pretending to be God?
I’ll admit that I fit the mold of a woman who rewrites history 
just to make hell look a little bit more like heaven.

Featured art: A picture taken by Artist Holton Rower for The Wishbone Project.

My grandmothers daughter, the woman meant to be my mother, loves to compare us to Lorelai and Rory Gilmore.
Yet, we haven’t spoken since…well, I am simply not sure when. 

Perhaps, she is having imagined conversations with the idea of a daughter who is not me. 

My grandmothers daughter wears the face of someone who regrettably married her high school sweetheart out of obligation to a second pink line on a $10 stick. 
Her body weighs heavy with the weight of a cheating husband and disappointment of a distant daughter, and 
her face tells on her with frown lines that run as deep as our family’s generational trauma. 
My grandmothers daughter sounds a lot like, “Does this shirt make me look fat?” and cries behind closed dressing room doors. 
I can hear the burdensome rise and fall of her shoulders, 
of the salty tears running a marathon down her face, 
of the hard thud of a shirt being thrown onto the floor. 

And, hey, quick confession: My grandmothers daughters daughter sounds a lot like silence.

My grandmothers daughter loves to brag about her daughter on Facebook, but 
never seems to have anything nice to say face-to-face…or anything to say at all. 
I am still trying to decide what I prefer more: my grandmothers daughters failed attempts to connect through judgment or discordant silence.
Yet, as I age, I am beginning to see my hair gray where my grandmothers daughters did. 
Our frown lines twin, and I now understand that this is an inheritance neither of us asked for.
This is my mothers first time being alive, and I am trying to unlearn the shape of her sadness. 

So this year, I made myself a promise to not extinguish my birthday candles with tears brought on by the fear of aging into my mother. 
Instead, I will try to morph my frown lines into smile lines while there’s still time. 
I will turn the camera toward my friends because that is what I want to remember when I am on my deathbed.
I will let the candles be blown out by the burst of my laugh

I am five and use my father as a cubby on the couch.
He reads aloud about wars between good and evil,
sounding out onomatopoeia and
his inner child excitedly explains the lore behind men in capes and masks.

I am seven and trying to pedal a bike with training wheels.
My father pushes me so I gain momentum.
Even when I get the hang of gravity, I white-knuckle the bars—
afraid of the animalistic asphalt ready to bite, but
my father is the type to use his shirt to bandage bloody knees. 

I am ten and in the dark of a theater.
My father whispers in my ear what scenes are true to the comics and 
becomes a wannabe Rotten-Tomatoes-worthy movie critique when the scenes fail to replicate their written counterpart.
Afterwards, we rave about our favorite parts, but 
my mother does not speak.

I am thirteen and my mother jumps out of a moving car,
screaming at my father to shoot her already.
I beg them to stop and strike him before running to my grandmothers house.
She comes and gives us all a timeout. 

I am sixteen and back my fathers car into a tree.
A dent appears like a gaping wound.
He says nothing except, "Switch seats."
Silence suits us. 

I am eighteen and sneaking off to my boyfriends house.
When I arrive, I slide my car into his car, and profusely apologize, but my high eyes tell on me.
The chaos is interrupted by my father as he texts me.
He is leaving my mother.
I try to remember our last meal as a family, but
the memory left the door before he did. 

I am twenty-one and my father texts me on birthdays and holidays.
His name glowing on my screen makes my stomach twist as
he causes me a severe case of conflict. 
I do not agree with his actions, but 
I am my fathers shadow.

I am twenty-two and my father tells me that
everything bad that has happened to me is my fault. 
I respond that he is dead to me, and
I begin the process of befriending grief by
mourning the fact that my father will not walk me down the aisle. 
I wonder how long it will take for my father to
remove the ink stain of me in his arm.

I am twenty-five and often forget 
I have three half-siblings that I do not know.
In photos my grandmother posts on Facebook,
I cannot help but notice how there are no photos of me in their home. 
When my father dies, 
I will be forced to find solace that 
his silence is no longer voluntary.

Featured art: Unknown

1. Chase a controversial topic, capture it as a metaphor and feed it to modern consumers.
2. Contemplate what makes my voice shake and eyes water and dedicate my life to it.
3. Buy a house by the sea of the northeast and turn it into a library.
4. Learn the language of my own laughter.
5. Throw my past a funeral party, mourn and move on.
6. When waking up, feel the weight of my eyelids or, in other words, slow down.

Featured art: Unknown

When you depart every spring,
I wander among liminal wastelands— 
upsetting myself with the sight of an empty hand.

When you return every winter,
you wonder why I linger.
Devotion is the most romantic thing a human can offer.

You protest my prayers, but
I plead to be more than altar and offering.
Restore me back into your ribcage.

You promised pathways to paradise, but 
trap me in a cycle of proving my worth.
I am your long-term curse.

They gift me a thorn-less rose and
ask me if I have ever known loss.
Like Lilith, I relate to loss more than anything else.

Because all eyes condemned Eve, 
men are allowed to forget their vows.
Despite this, I stay.

I stay until no longer allowed.

Featured art: Unknown