On the Peculiar Intimacy of Girlhood Friendship

I couldn’t tell most of the time
if I wanted her or her litheness.

late one weekend we crept to the kitchen
and she mixed pilfered vodka
with diet coke, aglow
in the light from above
the stove, and we drank til it tilted.
unfrictioned and nightshrouded,
I realized only as I whispered:

it was an experiment
for awhile but
now I don’t think I could
stop if I wanted
starvation was a game
until it wasn’t;
hunger is a challenge
that I won until
I lost and now it’s
a compulsion wearing
me as a jacket.

I’m too convinced for intervention.
so she brushes my hair cross-legged
on the bedroom floor and bears witness.
so she leads me up the ladder into her twin bed
and we settle in amongst the moonbeams,
surrounded by precipice and just enough light
to be seen by. we face each other on one pillow
and tangle ourselves close enough
not to roll off either side.

Mallie Holcomb received a bachelor’s in English from University of North Carolina Asheville in 2020, where she was awarded the Topp-Grillot Scholarship for strongest student of poetry and the Virginia Bryan Award for best senior thesis. Since then she has been working in libraries, practicing yoga, and testing the veracity of the statement “we publish both established and emerging poets.”