This piece was first published in Quarto’s 2023 Spring Print Edition.
Illustration by Ishaan Barrett
Content warning: death
you are eating
chicken hearts
chewing on valves
veins ventricles
fat streaming
down your hands
bile-yellow into the
chlorinated water,
the waterfall
your parents installed
last summer
because what's money
for, if not
for spending?
you are telling me
a polish folk story
where the dragon has
to be punished
so they fill its
mouth with salt
dunk its head
in the river and
it drowns then
you laugh because
i was born
in the year 2000
you are reading
me bad news
from your phone
ten pronounced
dead in shooting
helicopter crash leaves
no survivors
mother cannibalizes son
to survive alaskan winter
and somehow
you're still
hungry and
i can't tell for what
i don't know
maybe
for something
to love?
Julia Tolda (she/her) is a senior at Barnard College studying comparative literature. In her poetry and collage work, she explores "saudade," a Portuguese word Tolda would define as "the heartbreaking beauty of longing." Her favorite color is pink.