Poetry by Sam Moe

              ​John Brighenti CC




And in July I am losing track of myself near a tide pool
 
I see your reflection in the shallow end of the tide
pool. It’s another greasy July day and I am already
sick of myself. We crouch on sun-hot rocks whose slick 
surfaces our mothers have warned us from, flip-flops 
in one hand, an old bucket in the other, I wait to capture 
 
the crab. But she doesn’t want to reveal herself, and I am 
distracted by iridescent mica, a stone my father used to tell 
me was worthless. I remember once when I was even younger
he gave me a crate full of amethysts to keep, later swapping
with me for a fossilized fish, as if to say, if you stay right here
 
you too will be beautiful. But I am sliding on new hot rocks
careful not to get too close to you. We don’t love each other
anymore, but I still love you, the difference being there is no longer
a love collective, no longer an us, no more phone calls, we won’t
sing nicknames into shells, but I know I’d call the lobster Bunny
 
you can be Ray of Sunlight on Silt, or Mint Shells Hiding Deep
maybe The Brine and The Banana Popsicle Stick Burning a Hole 
in my Pocket. I want to give the joke to you but you call me a Sagittarius
before walking into the sea. And I am still here, and anyways, what’
the point in leaving when people sometimes change, maybe you come
back and we do everything right, this time when I call you answer
 
I won’t admit I care too much; I’ll go to the beach by myself, wouldn’t
it be fun to love the perfect me, the me who isn’t reaching a hand down
below and grabbing, frantically, at any crab. The new me is quiet, maybe
even be asleep on this rock, hair spilling over the edge, the crustaceans 
give me a trim and you’d walk over, say how you got it all wrong, you’d
be like oh, I love how casual you are with your neck on the ledge, and my heart
wouldn’t even be in my throat, my hands wouldn’t scratch at my sides
 
I could say, I forgot you loved bunnies, and you’d be hurt yet intrigued
that I named this crab for you, can I name other things, too? 
 
Yes, the new me might say. She’d rise, half asleep and hungry, slide aviators
down her nose, and say, look, you see that? And we would look at the sand dunes.
That is a dove. She’d point to the ocean foam. That is a checkers game. She’d nod
at the sun. That is a clover. She’d point to her heart. And that is an empty pail.
 
What color? You might ask, thrilled by the lack. Hmm, she’d say, because it would
have to be the opposite of your favorite color. Green, she’d say. And we would laugh
and laugh before new fathers arrived, loving fathers, fathers who knew our middle
names and fathers who didn’t yell, a field full of fathers to take us home,
 
and we’d fall asleep in the back seat of a grey minivan, warm and coated in sand,
maybe we’d be holding hands, maybe we’d go back to your house, and one
hundred fathers would cook us one hundred dinners. Everyone would get our names 
right. Everyone would stay, and the new me would rest easy, knowing I’d never
have to say love again and mean it. The new me out there, somewhere, even now
without scars, without grape blunt wrappers and crush letters. 
 
I think she might be twirling a lettuce leaf around like a parasol, I think she hears
you, my darling, you are saying over and over again, and we start crying from 
laughing so hard.

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Windy Blue Nights
 
Your father’s dinner table spread includes a red candle in the center, melted just enough so it looks like a caved-in tomato, or maybe the caved-in heart of a blue whale, you don’t recognize shapes, you’re uncertain. Your stepmother cradles a puppy’s head like a baby, your sister is next to you and trying not to cry. No one speaks to you for over half an hour. The house smells of spices and red wine. Your body knows the score, knows how to make your heart into a diamond pin so as not to alert the others that you are still something to be yelled at, not someone. 
 
And the kitchen floor is warm, there are identical sets of espresso mugs, stirring spoons, mason jars whose linings are soaked with olive oil, each stuffed with leaves from his garden, you start to wonder if the plants keep track of the yelling, do the trees remember who did the planting, because if your sister dragged dirt into the house he would have yelled at her, if he wasn’t happy with his knees he would have blamed your stepmother, but look at how green the leaves are, he says someday if you get your own yard you can grow something, too.
 
Correction: he says if you get your own lawn.
 
At night you walk around the first floor—you’re not allowed on the second—looking for something to take with you. An item to remember the house, because your father says they’ll be moving but he doesn’t know where yet, and likely won’t tell you when the time comes. They’ll disappear from your life, just like others before them, just like your other family members who never wanted anything to do with you. But you’re alone in the night, and your scars are now healed, or whatever that means because they’re not going away. 
 
Don’t you remember deep blue nights spent sobbing on this floor? You carved a way out for yourself, so why do you still feel stuck.
 
It feels good to drive away.
 
You leave at dawn for the ocean house, house closest too salt and brine, house of a thousand burnt secrets, wrapped secrets, secrets tucked beneath leaves, twisted in branches free of berries, your ex’s cigarettes still damp in the faded sun. Ocean house has many nicknames, but you can’t talk about that right now. It’s not time, yet, to peel away the layers of hurt, to reverse the dissociation—if such a thing is even possible.
 
Healing is leaving, healing is never, healing is always, healing is the quiet pocket of night when, windows down, you are driving around in the New England cold, yes you are crying but you left your tools at home, you’re tossing words into woods, you’re hoping to reach someone someday, maybe in the middle of the night, maybe not, too reach each other with green hands and flowers for lungs, we’re not going to yell at each other, you can lay down your armor, but keep it within arm’s length, healing is healing is time is absurd, is tired, is late, is waiting, maybe, waiting.

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Sam Moe (she/her) is a writer of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. She is pursuing a PhD in creative writing at Illinois State University. Her work has appeared in The Tide Rises, The Tide Falls, The Shore, Levatio Mag and others. She received an Author Fellowship from Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing in June, 2021.