Making Myself Up

kat bodrie


As a young girl at my grandmother’s vanity,
I used gold tubes of electric red —

red meaning stop,
red meaning go.

Like trying on lipstick
during a pandemic

(burgundy, purple, midnight, and bronze —
mature beyond the usual turn-ons)

I wanted color to fill in
what I didn’t know.


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Kat Bodrie

Kat Bodrie is a professional editor and creative writer based in Winston-Salem, NC. Her poetry has appeared in Wild Roof Journal, bee house journal, Waymark: Voices of the Valley, West Texas Literary Review, Rat's Ass Review, and elsewhere. Learn more at katbodrie.com.

Sofie Harsha