In Which I Am Mother and Father and Daughter and Murder (after The X-Files)

by E. Kristin Anderson

I waited.          I waited so many years to unravel what I just               knew
in the passenger seat of my father’s car            when I could speak and
maybe be heard.          Agent Scully, when you see these little girls in buttons

and cardigans       you know they are perfect science     and perfect menace—    
as if creation of girl is easy        as if the process       should be replicated.          
Girl becomes woman        becomes caged animal         fingers in the fencing.       

I know I was a little girl once       but, Dana, can you tell me        when I grew
from girl to ruin?           I check the photos.       I was born again       created       
not as woman but weapon.        Behind the curtain is a fence         and beyond

the fence that dream of the swing        flying higher           before I grew into fear     
of falling       of dislodging the whole swing set       from the earth        with my
monstrous size.          By the time I was tall enough to reach the medicine cabinet     

nobody knew but I was afraid of being alive.      Check my file. Destroy the records.      
A girl can’t be too careful, Dana.          You know.     You’ve seen.      Oh, Scully,
there was no panic button in that house—       only my own heightened psychosis      

my own miracles brought to happen with my own hands.        In a red jacket      
or a blue gown          I can sit through a blood letting of sorts         and survive.    
Genetic material is everything            and it is nothing        and I breathe and

I breathe and I breathe and     I don’t drink the poison but           I am the poison       
cultivated        like foxglove in the back yard       in the weeds under the rusty swings.       
And when all that’s left is me        I will have expected it, Dana.       Just as you

expected that these little girls could kill.        It’s a paralytic dream that sets me free:      
I am not superhuman.        I am not a file folder.      I tuck myself in knowing
my chromosomes are residue and riot        the sticky-sweet        clinging to truth.

E. Kristin Anderson is a poet and glitter enthusiast living mostly at a Starbucks somewhere in Austin, Texas.  She is the editor of Come as You Are, an anthology of writing on 90s pop culture (Anomalous Press), and her work has been published worldwide in many magazines. She is the author of nine chapbooks of poetry including Pray, Pray, Pray: Poems I wrote to Prince in the middle of the night (Porkbelly Press), Fire in the Sky (Grey Book Press), 17 seventeen XVII (Grey Book Press), and Behind, All You’ve Got (Semiperfect Press). Kristin is a poetry reader at Cotton Xenomorph and an editorial assistant at Sugared Water. Once upon a time she worked nights at The New Yorker. Find her online at EKristinAnderson.com and on Twitter at @ek_anderson.