Francesca Leader

CW: Self-harm/Endangered child/Underage drug use

In Case of Emergency Break Glass 

Like for instance if you panic in first period, and hide in the girls’ bathroom for two hours before sneaking out to catch the city bus home. And once you get there you slip in the side window that doesn’t close right, but you can’t find any fucking thing to cut yourself with because Mom locked up all the razors and scissors and needles and knives. So you walk the half-mile to the culvert where you used to get high, and probably will again, with that boy who dumped you and kissed you and dumped you and kissed you. And then all you gotta do is find an empty Henny bottle (there’s always at least one), smash it on a rock, and pull up your sleeves and cut and cut and cry and bleed. And for a while, anyway, that specific sharp-sweet pain will make the sirens in your head stop screaming.

What You Know

(Published in Discretionary Love, June 2023)

You know to fear windowless white vans.
You know a trunk’s as good as a coffin.
You know to kick and bite and scream
Like your life depends on it, because it does.

You know ponytails invite rapacious hands
And homemade Halloween treats hide poison.
You know to guard your bathing suit area,
To report so much as a vibe that unsettles.

But do you know how to tell love from desire?
How to refuse sweetness when you’re starving?
How to look in the mirror and see what’s there
              Instead of what isn’t?

I ask because I hope that you know
What I don’t.

Because there’s so much I can’t             teach you.

Within

(Published in Mosspuppy, May 2023)

 they embrace   my daughter—
“The Pretty One’s back!”—
in         soft folds of sweating
adolescent       senescence

 of slippers        pajama pants
loose t-shirts and de-stringed hoodies

 no strings allowed here
no laces
staples
pencils
wires

 nothing edged or strangl-
stab-bing

 nothing that hurts
except what’s              inside
and can’t be removed
   only drug-subdued

 “Don’t let us see you here again”
they hug-teased
my girl
just
two days ago

shoving her   lovingly home

 but she   knew
as they knew

 she’d soon boomerang             back
into these soft-sad
arms 

these voices     inviting-insistent
enough to drown out
the voices 

    drowning

my       child

                        from within.

Francesca Leader is a self-taught, Pushcart-nominated writer originally from Western Montana. Her work has appeared in Wigleaf, Fictive Dream, Barren, Leon Literary Review, JMWW, Bending Genres, Drunk Monkeys, Stanchion, and elsewhere. Learn more about her work at inabucketthemoon.wordpress.com.