Sketchbook
“If you were an animal, which would you be?”
“A puffin.” I say it unapologetically.
It is my favorite animal.
On the borderlands of womanhood
where neither girl nor woman fits comfortably
on my tongue I wonder what of this,
my immortality, will be cataloged as juvenilia;
an indulgence of believing one day I will be a body
of things worth cataloging.
I write a letter with a pink pen
and do not feel ashamed.
I make a list of things that resemble
skeletons. I share it with no one.
It is a rich magic to see my own human
form amidst so many other natural,
beautiful, terrible things.
Through the word “other” I include myself
among natural, beautiful, terrible things.
I draw myself a puffin in pink pen.
It is imperfect, and I do not throw it away.
I title the image: a portrait of God.
I write it unapologetically.
I write this unapologetically.
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Beverley Sylvester is a writer, composer, dramaturg, and musician. Her work is often rooted in the Southern Gothic genre where she interrogates the sticky, uncomfortable, and lovely relationships we have to death and dying, sexuality, spirituality, race, love, earth, politics, gender, rot, and embodiment in the American Deep South. Her writing has received the Artistine Mann Award in Playwriting, the New South Young Playwrights Award, and publication of poetry in Yellow Arrow Journal, among other recognitions. You can find her on Instagram at @bsylvester_arts or at bfsylvester.com.
