Poetry by Andrea Lynn Koohi

             ​ Dane CC



​
I Wish I Could Tell You 


how we held our flashlights 
as though they were guns
aimed them at cracks 
along ceiling edges
beating back roaches 
who dared to emerge 
though often they’d lose 
their gluey grip

fall 

upside down
onto our beds
while just beyond
the door each night 
our parents transformed
into things unseeing
rage shards 

shooting

as trails of liquids 
and powders soiled
each crevice of our 
lives like the roaches. 
I wish I could tell you
before you check that box 
that we wielded the light until 
it died, but they kept crawling through.

​


Andrea Lynn Koohi is a writer and editor from Toronto, Canada. Her work appears or is forthcoming in The Maine Review, Pithead Chapel, Streetlight Magazine, the winnow magazine, Emerge Literary Journal and others.