When I return from a thirty-hour travel day my back feels feverish. I cannot figure out what is wrong with me. Why is my skin like needles? I ask my partner. I always ask questions that remind people I’m unlovable. Such as, why are we friends and why do you love me and will I die and can you tell me if my toe looks wrong. France was too green. I couldn’t focus on the lake beyond. Spent days wondering if the light reflection was tinfoil or skirt hems or coins. My stomach dissolved. People slammed kitchen doors. Basement doors. Arms on tables. Hands into hands. I grew up in an angry home. I sat after the slamming of the faux-gold front door set my heart in the path of a red drill and thought about dying. Every day everyone asked if I was okay. Twenty-four hours after returning home I packed my bags for Virginia. I was sobbing again because things kept falling to shit and a man was brutal and he wasn’t sorry. Not really. Suddenly I remembered. While we were watching television my partner slammed the length of his arm against my back. As a joke. He often play-punches me. Hard. My brain ate the memory for sixteen hours. Upon arriving in Virginia I seek out a bruise but find none. I call my partner and accidentally interrupted him so he ends the call. I call back to ask what his problem is and he hangs up again. This happens six times. There is another man who joked about saving me. I can’t elaborate right now. What else does this body remember when pain blooms beneath my skin? One day at residency I couldn’t eat and someone brought me a single slice of turkey. He asked, “Can you eat this?” I should have taken a picture as proof. I seek out evidence like a blood hound. This really happened to me. You must believe me because I’m covered in blood. Then I remember when my mother first grabbed my red arm and screamed until my skull changed shape. I would make the worst detective. I imagine inviting entire truckloads of evidence into a case. I go up against men who don’t believe my evidence and I spend the rest of my life trying to convince them. This doesn’t matter. It hurt. It was real. I’ve spent the summer disappearing into my skeleton but you have not yet seen my bones so you don’t believe I have a second situation. One day I might be wire. That’s not what I want to tell you. Once, I thought you were my home. Something, something, I’ll make my own damn home. Something, something, tire fire. Rage-red May. Death-try in June. I hate you in July. You reveal yourself in August but I’m already a dead egg. Nothing could have been done.

 

Sam Moe is the author of eight books. Her most recent poetry collection, RED HALCYON, is forthcoming from Querencia Press in 2026. Her debut short story collection, I MIGHT TRUST YOU, is out from Experiments in Fiction (2025). She has attended the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and received fellowships from the Longleaf Writer’s conference and the Key West Literary Seminar. Sam has also attended residencies at The Writers’ Colony at Dairy Hollow, VCCA, and Château d’Orquevau.