Your mother likes the idea of wearing bird wings
I. Lump
And one day her arm goes numb at school;
after ruling everything out, the doctor finds
something is wrong with her nerves.
That night and every night after,
you stop sleeping.
Her doctor calls it an unidentifiable
lump.
You look at the calcium deposits on
your arm and wonder.
II. Teeth
When you were younger, your body You fought in Central Park.
being eaten away daily by different How does one explain a grief
men and their hands were jaws and \which one does not understand.
their bodies were voids, sure you were Out all night, everything warm,
bleeding, but that’s not the point. Numb.
When you arrived back at her
mother’s apartment, she told Your reflection in the lake is
you to die for all she cared. obscured by easy yellow fish and
you are afraid of the smooth river
Was that the moment your story. stones.
stopped and hers began? You wonder
if it’s possible to erase yourself.
III. Stone
You dream and in the dream her
house is filled with doors. When
you open the first door it is filled with
rivers and salmon, each stacked on
top of each other like ribbons.
Door number two is oysters
whose surfaces are embossed
with words from your poems
you can’t read a thing except
no / no / no, rivulets of memory.
You know this search, you know this topic. This wound.
The vanity mirror door says sorry
empty today, no silver, yes squid
ink and an octopus twisting around
your fingers, the lower half of your body
is numb,
lift the couch and find a chorus
pour tea and her tennis bracelet spills,
she appears in the living room, opens
her sweater to show you the surgery
marks on her stomach, organs removed.
Every line break is meaningless
in the bright surface of her scars
yours have all turned light as berries.
When she finds out you’re at it again
you fight in the parking lot of a school.
IV. Bone
Everyone comments on your I have trouble eating, you tell a
eating disorder and your mother. friend. They laugh loudly and say,
has an eating disorder and your I know. You wonder if time will make
cousin and your sister and your this funny.
aunt and your grandmother have
eating disorders, but, now, why is
your memory a ringworm?
At breakfast during Christmas
morning, your stepbrother observes
you and your sister having pancakes.
I’m surprised you’re both eating, he You say his name one time, but it’s
says, because you don’t know how. not enough to stop him.
What? You don’t.
You hide in the bathroom and smoke a joint. What, you? Don’t. What, you don’t? What? You, don’t. You break apart his words as you hang your legs over the lip of the tub and inspect the mold, the vanilla shampoo, the tools.
Your heart is a rag and your history
is blood. Does trauma make you a
pessimist or has your mind decayed
to the point where there is only cavity
soft to the touch, still craving sweetness,
like the time you thought there
was a hole in a tooth when it
should have been pale white and
you took your mother’s sewing needle
and jabbed.
She loses half the bone mass in her jaw
because of her ED. Yours leads to blood /
hospitals / hospital / bad walk
inability to breathe / the week you
were in so much pain you thought
your legs would dissipate / needles
of pressure / IV in your arm / your
aunt / back then / was so worried.
V. Host
You share memories and experiences you share jaw trauma, an affinity for séances, a belief in ghosts, pain from your father, a love of all things red, melancholy in the morning, journaling, hospital trips, abuse, an obsession with pearls, stones, seashells, foam, a problem with eating certain textures, too much sweetness, a belief in ghosts, and your grandmother is a ghost but you almost never hear from her, so your grandfather and great grandmother are gone and the apartment complex she shares with your cousin—who, yes, hates both of you—is filled to the brim with ghosts / rats / mold / a dumbwaiter sealed after someone tried to climb in so he could rob the apartment, a fear of the back room with the stolen cross and the fire escape, the time you were both suicidal in your youth (but for you it took longer to move away), an obsession with well-preserved New Yorker pea coats belonging to your grandmother, and lies, and tendons, and screws in your lungs, and you can’t breathe, no one has died yet but someday they will.
VI. Muscle
And you try to turn off the love you
have for everyone, you:
fail, lie, cry in the car on the way
home, wear sunglasses to the supermarket
and grief grows mold on your heart.
Don’t worry, your colleague tells you,
One day you’re going to walk up to me
and say, last night I got the best night’s
sleep.
© Sam Moe
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Sam Moe
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Sam Moe is the author of six books of poetry. Her most recent collection, RED HALCYON, is forthcoming from Querencia Press in 2026. Her debut short story collection, I MIGHT TRUST YOU, is forthcoming from Experiments in Fiction in Spring 2025. She has attended the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and received fellowships from the Longleaf Writers’ Conference and the Key West Literary Seminar. Sam has also received writing residencies from The Writers’ Colony at Dairy Hollow and Château d’Orquevau.
