Sweater Weather by Joni Renee

Now is the time to make things. You got the hot jazz you wanted, 30 reams, a bay window, my lower belly, and that large art deco piece. Now the goal is to drink better and better bottles of wine, so when with smart colleagues, never hoot, “Best wine in the world!” It gets better. Ignore massive, mounting pain. Focus on getting a job in your field. Only one of us did, and it's not scary talking to inmates, she says, because you're just Skyping with them really, they don't even know your full real name. The bed is finally the right size, still most nights we just fall in shivering with our three-step regimens and rarely you touch me. Costa Rica is on the fridge like a branding iron on my flank. There are too many splinters in my new desk and me.

If I call out, I want to use my full real name.

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Joni Renee is an artist and writer from rural Oregon. Her art has been shared on such diverse stages as The Moth in Portland, the Segerstrom Center for the Performing Arts in Costa Mesa, California, and the MacLaren Youth Correctional Facility in Woodburn in partnership with the Morpheus Youth Project. Her writing explores themes of nature, family, and the autistic body, and has appeared or is forthcoming in Superstition Review, xoJane, and regional journals. She is best known for lush accounts of intimate meals, loss, pastoral youth and discovery, and queerness.