Poetry by Sam Toggas

             ​spablab CC


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Necktie Anatomy

There are 177,147 different ways to knot a tie 
and they don’t want you to know any of them. 
Even the people that made you.

My fathers collection, it’s own chaotic sanctuary 
of colors only my curiosity seeks refuge in. I spend
time never asking him to show me how he overlaps 

and folds into a windsor. It's not that I love ties. 
It's that I see who he becomes and I want to become too.
The first time I remember tomboy replacing my name, 

I wanted it sewn to my chest labeling me who I am
until their “you’re a girl, and girls don’t”slip stitch 
my vision, feeling hidden but exposed. 

This is when my fascination in things I wasn’t supposed 
to like, begins. Digging my hands into anything that would 
stain them, proof that I was a part of something real.

I’m old enough to almost reach the counter when I refuse 
to wear another dress so I twist myself into clothes that are 
not my own. Middle school is when I realize I like Chelsea 

with the hoop earrings but I’ll learn to just be friends 
because this one stoplight town isn't ready to know me yet. 
The store doesn’t know how to help and I don’t know what 

to ask so I buy my first tie through ebay for $5.99. Playing 
and pausing too many videos just to get it right. Always 
misaligning my shirt and calling it my clumsy button 

rebellion but she loves me for this. It will be another decade
until I hold my partner’s hand in a store designed for men 
and their wives. 

But, one day I will have 40 something ties hanging on framework 
welded by my hands and she will pull me in by the seams 
to say welcome home.





I See You Even In The Dust Clouds

It feels like 2:19 in the morning for hours when I miss 
you most. Sinking to the ground of any room to study 
the coroner’s report of you
                   Time of injury: approximately 2:19 am 
                   Immediate cause: Multiple Blunt Force Trauma 
                   Due to: Pedestrian/ Motor Vehicle Accident  
                   Pronounced dead at 3:15 am. 
I never counted the minutes until now. Fifty three. I wanted 
to hear they had it wrong, say it wasn’t my father found on hamilton 
boulevard. That these cops showed up t0 the wrong address, knocking
on the wrong door. But her loose hands and unsteady keys drove away 
from the highway bar’s last call. It’s been twelve years and you never 
came back from that night, 

your                         voice 

                                   as                distant                 


from         

                                                        me  


                  as every voicemail unsaved.
I saw the farmhouse was up for sale again. 
How different it looks dressed up in another family’s visions,
every memory striped and painted over. But I remember 
the planks of ash not allowing silence beneath our feet
and first nose bleeds cured with tampons. I still feel you 
fumbling to make my brown curls into ponytails, snapping 
more rubber bands in one sitting than what comes in a pack. 
The backyard, my fish cemetery and the front yard, everyone 
else’s. My favorite wooden banister I folded my body over 
just to let go, making music, hitting every spindle like 
a harp on the way down. Standing short enough to reach 
the counter, bent over solving fractions. Every inch 
of stone touched by your hands and your woodshop 
where I watched you make dust into clouds. The shutters 
are no longer black and the trees are overgrown.
I used to write you letters you’d never read,
envelope sealed with my 17 year old spit and stashed 
in any drawer I knew I wouldn’t open.

It’s been twelve years of the wind reminding me
to move even when it becomes louder than you.

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Sam Toggas [she/her] is a welder by trade and poet by training. Her street art and poetry has been published in Toho Journal. She lives in Philadelphia with her partner Hannah.

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