published as poetry in Fools Mag issue 14.5, September 2024.
and I walked too far for it to be carried with me, strayed too far from beaten paths to find footsteps embedded in mud cracks, ran too close to the sun for my hands to still be so cold and wet with sweat; to gush like melting glaciers and to swim in a polluted stream of subconscious. I am a forgetter and I scatter memories like puzzle pieces to the floor, dust collecting in the hollow spaces, until I go searching under the table for more— scurry my fingers over boards like a scavenging rat, I build my edges like walls and bridge the gaps between and then you tell a joke that reminds me how a father screams at a pliant mother, and I, in turn, become my mother too, fly too far from the scene to escape it, still see it when I close my eyes— go back to curses to constantly circle splintering glass, honey-stuck to the dining table in that house, where I cried so much for the bug to be taken outside instead of killed.
Shea Winters 