June 2026 Poetry Contest Winner
How to Quit Being Kept
Rebecca Kalafatas
you don’t need to exist outside the red earth of your gums. throw away anything that keeps you: the square-cut muchness of your walls, the sore side of your hips, the bitter taste of your coffee, the plaster, your lips — swelled or busted or kissing spills that taste like precious metals and gemstones. orchids, lilies, metaphors for beds. that sun-stamped scar on your forearm. that cracked carton of eggs. that letter you will swear is not a love poem. that heavy hand. that heavier head.
and don’t touch the furniture in georgia. all the wood smells like rot as do all ten punctures in your body, stuck mouldering like the scum of the sweetgums, the switchgrass, the swallowtails. open up. lose the lessons you’ve taught. don’t choke. take a hot shower. feel the moss. reopen all ten gruesome punctures in your body (sometimes silence has the same effects as scurvy) and move on to your throat. clip anything metastasizing — the butterfly shapes know, as will everything, how little you love this. take their wings to embrace. cleanliness, godliness. spin an honest nail to your faith. know divine retribution, the mud jewels, the fight. a deep bark, a low growl. something that bites.
now try being grateful. sing now. dance. find a shirt to grab onto in case intervention comes, knee to a bull, sacredly unbuckling its ill-fitting pants. toss little balls of cedar, slices of soap. lose a battle on an even smaller hill. keep the wrinkles on your coat. now try being grateful. reopen your throat. gag on a masterpiece of cicadas, harmonize when you’re heard. let someone else who isn’t sorry kiss the edge of your scalp, your jaw — somewhere gently on the verge. eat the soft side of a honeycrisp, the sour side of a peach. keep a pinky ring on your index, keep a zip around your wrist. let the leaf-litter under the sycamores forget, as will everything, how little you loved this. don’t forgive yourself, don’t ruminate, don’t let the wound clot. now try being grateful. write a letter. write a soliloquy. write it — a love poem for a tied knot.
Rebecca Kalafatas is a writer from Chapel Hill, NC and current student at Agnes Scott College in Georgia. Her work has been published in the Chapel Hill Different Drummer Literary Magazine and the Agnes Scott Writer’s Festival Magazine. She enjoys writing across various forms to explore unfamiliar beauty in the loud, vehement, and paradoxical.
