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Catherine Bai is the recipient of a Vermont Studio Center Fellowship and residency grant from the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation. Her fiction was longlisted for the 2025 Disquiet Prize and appears in Best Debut Short Stories 2022.

I never said I was good

Every version of me that has died is a child
my parents loved more than I did.
I threw up in their mouths and they swallowed
I threw darts at their legs and they caught them with their chest
I curled my fingers into a fist and they simply held it, a stone
they cast into the river knowing every current will sink.

Still, they dive headlong—
through their bubbles they tell me to stay on the banks.
They'll go first, the river says.

They'll go first.

✨ Your support gives me vital inspiration as I write for thirty days this month.

Tupelo Press provides the canvas; I bring my words, accompanied by a cohort of fine poets, writing thirty poems in thirty days, all ours to edit and submit as we wish. 30/30 poems have been taken by over 200 journals and featured in over 40 published chapbooks, all so Tupelo Press can keep publishing exquisite and diverse voices that might never be heard otherwise.

Every dollar gives me confidence to write more, and helps the press place more poems in gorgeous books. Help me to help this distinguished press. Give today!