I pull out armfuls of clothes & just about anything looks good, feels better. When something’s laying against my hips funny I put something looser on & turn out hotter anyway. I wear less makeup than I did, or maybe I don’t but I make it look like I do— except my lips, which I keep lined & bold when I smile my teeth are shiny like I can call a man a hypocritical bastard & he smiles back in slight delay how big screens in stadiums do. I buy less but feel expensive. I make clothes, recycle outfits. I take a hundred selfies and keep fifty post them nowhere. I speak in full sentences most of the time. Hard to say what made me hotter— the Zoloft was a good start. Maybe it’s that I’ve written more poetry than I ever have & read even more. Thumped my heart on the desks when my fists didn't do. Maybe it’s that I cuffed someone I liked first for once. Made some of the same mistakes & some new ones. Cut him loose like every time before & crushed my heart to numbness. I’m hotter because I cut my hair off in the bathroom sink when I hit fuck it but everyone tells me how much hotter I am now because I learned the choreo to Seventeen’s “HOT” in my spare bedroom & because I sing Adele from my bed at the top of my lungs & don’t mind if the neighbors hear because they’d be impressed. Maybe I’m hotter now cuz I’m less vulnerable than I used to be, can’t get cut all the way to the quick.
Isabella Gross is a poet from Northern Michigan. She received her MFA in Creative Writing Poetry from Miami University and is currently a lecturer in rhet/comp at University of Wisconsin Eau Claire. When she’s not practicing K-pop choreography, she’s running her independent micropress, And Then Publishing.