Brittany Menjivar, born and raised in the DMV, loves storytelling in all its forms. She is currently a junior at Yale University, where she is studying English and Film. She often writes poetry at absurd hours; her work has appeared in Canvas Literary Journal, Crashtest Magazine, and YARN. She also reviews, interviews, and photographs bands as a music journalist for pop culture publication The Young Folks. In May 2019, she was selected as a screenwriting mentee for the AT&T Hello Lab Filmmaker Mentorship Program, which gives screenwriters and directors from underrepresented backgrounds the opportunity to have their short films produced under the guidance of Lena Waithe. Her film through the program, Fragile.com, premiered in Hollywood in November 2019, and has been featured in publications such as Vanity Fair and Mitú. If you’re reading this, she encourages you to take a moment reflecting upon your favorite childhood TV show and that song you played on repeat in 2012.
Back Brace
by Brittany Menjivar
Glossy, rounded,
hospital-wall-white and
jarringly asymmetrical—
almost like a newly freed baby
tooth, fascinating in its symbolic
soap-scrubbed awkwardness. This
is
your plastic companion—part
parasite, part friend. Its embrace
threatens to crush your crooked
bones; its weight
sits like a demon on your dreaming body in
the discomfort of your bed; its Velcro straps
roar when your try to resist its rule. Yet
it gives you a form when you look in the
mirror—tells you you’re more than a
graphite-scratch-question-mark
of a girl—reminds you to walk
forward, shoulders broad and
exposed, through the valley of the
night
and into the shining tomorrow, when the
feeling of waking up as an overturned
beetle will be only a memory. Yes, it is
no
talisman—yes, it stirs storms in your eyes—but
you can’t help but admire the gracefulness
of its curves, gleaming as if
they know exactly what they are supposed to
do. When you’re lying down, balancing a glass
of water on its flat surface, there is order
in the chaos, and you know that you can coexist
with the snake in your spine— dance with it, even.