Meeting Gods in Basement Bars and Other Ways to Find Forgiveness
by
Kirsten Reneau
Kirsten Reneau received her MFA from the University of New Orleans. She has been nominated for various prizes and won the Reed Magazine Creative Nonfiction Challenge 2022. This is her first chapbook. She is online at www.kirstenreneau.com.
from Meeting Gods in Basement Bars and Other Ways to Find Forgiveness
Excerpt from : An Incomplete Dictionary of Words That Make Me Think About My Body as I Try Not to Relapse
Ache (verb)
I stepped into a bath so hot my skin believed it was cold and prickled upwards at the touch. I imagine the soles of my feet turning red underneath me, inflamed by the water.
My back aches.
I am too young to have back problems, I told my mother earlier that day.
No, you’re getting older, she reminds me. Her back was nearly broken once, almost failed her body and slipped away before I was even a thought. Of course, you have a bad back. So do I.
I do not tell my mother that I feel like I am slipping away; I am worried that the years of recovery were wasted and I am back to where I began.
Bathe (verb)
In the bath, I sit up and my boyfriend walks in.
Hey, he says.
Hi.
Why are you sitting like that?
I look down at my body, leaning forward like a child, back curved, legs crossed. My stomach, white, soft, pushes out under the shell of my arms.
I don’t know, I answer.
Okay. You should stretch your legs out instead. He kisses my forehead and closes the door for me.
Child (noun)
Recently a woman at the grocery store asked me if I was expecting. It took me a moment to realize she meant with a child. I was in such shock I just said, Not yet! and laughed as if I was trying. It was a lie, but I have been thinking about having children lately. I think I would be a good mother. But I do not know how to raise sons, and I am a little afraid to have a daughter.
The woman at the grocery store said she would pray for me.
I said, Thanks! and thought about burning the dress I was wearing.
Diet (verb)
In the bath, I watch my body turn darker under the shadows and ripples of the water.
My first instinct is to hate it, my second is to apologize to it.
Last week we swam in the ocean, and I thank my legs and arms for their work. My parents used to take us to the ocean every summer, and there we learned to fight the waves, jump the surf, our bodies bright and alive with the energy of childhood, the unawareness of self. On this trip, I wore a one piece and a cover up because I did not want to expose my body to the world.
My hands hover over my stomach, the same stomach my mother has sometimes, when she’s not on a new diet or workout plan. It is a body made of slopes and soft flesh. She calls it a pudge. I don’t do diets anymore.
I look like my dad, really. Our baby photos get confused for each other; we share a nose, eyes that shut when we smile, dark hair and pale skin. But the features my mother has given me stand out more, perhaps because she has spent her entire life apologizing for them. And the older I get, the more my face takes on her shape; my body, still always noticeably larger than hers.
