i do everything twice

Artist Statement

This poem began as a seemingly simple revelation about myself that occurred about a year after my (very amicable) divorce. I was reflecting on whether I thought I’d ever marry again and why my ex-spouse and I had decided to marry so quickly, after just nine months of dating. I’m not sure what the answer is for him, but I realized that a big part of it for me was that, at the time, I felt I had something to prove, to myself more than anyone, but also to my parents, ex-partners, social-media followers, et. al. After so many failed relationships, beginning in my mid-teens, I felt the need to prove that I was lovable enough for someone to choose to marry. 

If/when I get married again, I hope and intend for it to be simply because I want to, because I am so deeply in love with someone and feel so deeply, profoundly loved and understood by them that I want nothing more than to be their spouse and continue doing life with them. I hope, too, that I’ll have nothing left to prove.

I chose to evenly divide the twenty words of the poem between five consecutive panels, featuring the life stages of a poppy in reverse, beginning with wilt and moving, through peak radiance and recent emergence, toward the fuzzy, unopened pod where the blooming process begins. In this way, by the time the end is reached, it feels, at least to me, like a beginning.

Brenna Womer (she/they) is a queer, childfree, Latine prose writer and poet. She is the author of Unbrained (FlowerSong Press, 2023), Honeypot (Spuyten Duyvil, 2019), and two chapbooks. Her writing across genres has appeared in North American Review, Indiana Review, DIAGRAM, The Pinch, and elsewhere. She is an assistant professor of English and teaches in California State University, Fresno's MFA in creative writing program.