I Share a Birthday With Tonya Harding

We have a predilection to abuse
antidepressants we are both tornadoes
of trailer trash who learned to skate

a bottle of bleach makes us lighter
to the cameras, the hand-sequined
leotard says frosting and cupcake

a cupcake that would fucking
deck you for that plate of prime rib
how quick and dangerous

we can be, lungs wet
with second hand smoke
how ready to skin a knee

I learned to skate backwards only
last year, it was the biggest accomplishment
of my life. Now I could undo the blemish

I’d made on the world, the looping
shallow scratch of my life, the jealousy
and need to succeed in royal purple

a bouquet better than a baby
in the arms, a bottle beneath the bed
and no friends to share it with I could

undo it all, I could be
the strongest in the world
a Barbie-pink bow in my permed hair

We could be someone our mothers
were proud of all it took was being
the very best in all the world

Halee Kirkwood is a 2019-2020 Loft Mentor Series Fellow and a recent recipient of an MFA from Hamline University. Their work has been published in Up The Staircase Quarterly, Muzzle Magazine, Cream City Review and others. They'd love to teach you to skate.