by Emma Sullivan ‘24

CW: sexual assault

After I read Mary Oliver’s Wild Geese at the onset of quarantine, I thought, Yes, I just need to let my body “love what it loves.” I’d always brushed off the jokes about liking girls from the boys at my lunch table, or once from my father at Thanksgiving dinner. While I dodged the thought, I compiled a Straight-Girl-History for myself as refuting evidence. Now that I was in forced meditation, I had to address that, Yes, boys were fine, I guess. But girls made my breath hitch. I thought maybe, this is the thing I love and need to let myself love.