Sam Moe
Winter Break

Pickled peaches, plums, apple slices, beauty berries, I am letting
my nails echo across your jars. Inside is fire hum, thick carpets, a
kitchen full of our movements, and grace is a bundled flaky heart
that lives on my tongue.

I’m not in love with you yet, but I could be, for all the times you
held my hands in your gaze, the too-closeness of the clock, of your
shoulder pressed to mine, of your private sugars, eyelash on the
cheek, how you call all the birds baby even though you know
their names.

Gold fabric hangs off your frame your sleeves are tasseled I’m constructing

entire lives to lie you into interest, we fake it for the crowd, do you
see how many days I won’t look at you, I’m afraid you’ll catch the
thrum in my gaze and mistake it for too much heat.

It’s gauzy-smooth, this crush is crushing me but I don’t mind, my
heart will pay for it, believe I am strong enough to withstand you in
December. The others are on the porch, watching constellations wink
in and out

behind cold pine branches the floor is coated in navy frost crisp cones

a netting of bejeweled needles all dark green at the base of the old well.

you and I are still inside, making fun of ice, feeding secret cheese
bursts to your best friend’s dog. I’ve started to think about you
when it’s raining, but when I tell you it comes out like I name
storms after country songs, I’ve never been able to commit, I
like the shy mouse the best.

I wish the house could sing.

I look forward to the blue-cream sugar cookies, I wonder if I’m
strong enough to twist the oven lamps into a crown. If you
touch me then you’ll know. Instead, you hand me a butter
knife and instruct me to tuck it into an already-folded silverware
bundle, claiming you’ll need a little more sharpness during
dinner.

My friend sees me, plum-stained fingers, spotted cheeks, I broke
blood-vessels in my jaw from pretending to yawn each time you
look my way. What are you doing? My friend asks. My stomach feels
like a violin.

*

Green Suns

I.

I dig small green suns out of the earth, patting the dirt after
to say, thank you, or maybe I meant to say goodbye to anyone
who might still seek after I run home. It’s been raw storms,
the air smelling of persimmons and sweet cantaloupe,

everything overripe and only a little damp. I know blue
heart had replaced my red, then blue bones, everything a lake
inside my body that I need to come to terms with, yet lake
as a synonym for lost love is insufficient.

The hurt of the green suns in my hands, their small flames
yoked, glue of the surrounding ferns drips below feet, kept
my goodbye sealed in a layer of the earth, moss, algae blossoms
from old slopes near the valley of the acid lake.

II.

The thing is, it’s been a raw storm day for two weeks and I
no longer understood raw feelings, did not know my purpose with
my mother, the lake tight as plastic wrap, its sediment too secretive,
coat of water buttoned down the middle only rippled on Tuesdays.

Shirt hems are the most seductive. I love collars, sighs,
pockets deep enough to hold a person. The true truth hurts
more than the lie truth. I have been betrayed.

III.

Goodbye to her tender heals, I will miss my own hands, the lake
calls out to me to just leave, and yet I stay. Smooth dirt
turned to coils from limey worms, scabbed beetles, those hope
ants coated in raw sugar blooms, everything alive, tucked
inside ignored her hands.

The blue day continues to unfold across the sky, thick struck
clouds hurt one another over hurting tree tops, I ignore electric owls,
raw grey ghost turtles crawling from holes of sycamores, a snake
wrapped around my ankle, I begin to sing to her.

IV.

Shy of my mother picking up the other line, I shake loose centipedes,
cry, clamp a hand over my mouth at the familiar hello. Lobe of Heaven’s
and earring pressed to dirt phone, probably ate a feast of white chocolate
croissants with her lover that day, blue silk bathrobe parted at the breasts,
is this a prank call?

Her raw voice, stained from weed and breakfast and maybe love,
the hurt I felt when I let the sweet-toed bugs fall gently back to earth,
goodbye to a slammed call farewell,  my blue heart at the very least
responding with an I hate hope, you fed me raw orange slices in my sleep,
I starved for your love and now I’m locked out of a lake that doesn’t even
belong to you, how dare you, Heaven, hello?

Dirt falls in bursts, mixes with my moisture.