Once

goodbye aquarium selfies, dancing with ribbons,
candy pockets and jelly-filled cookies, the place
beneath the ground with the milkshakes, throwing
up on the A train, someone is going around New
York City and writing your name on the walls
someone is losing, someone is running, is cash
in the water we linger, your mother made us tuna
sandwiches and bagels, she scribbled a note on
your napkin, left mine empty, nights we used
to spend on the green, ate candy at the laundry
place with the bubble machine, screaming what
the hell, liking those hexagonal tiles near the park
once I was a water lily, I was born a wing, I am
a mistake, anyways, happy day, you’re a snake
eating my heart, pissed about unsolicited advice
and the goddesses who chain smoke on your
fire escape, boarded up the windows but gatitos
enter anyway, it’s like, lo siento pero I don’t
want anyone to know I still love you, I want
Bruce Springsteen to save my life, I get up in
the triumphant little dream, apartment centipedes
and stolen saucers, still I light fires for her, do you?

SAME MOE

Sam Moe is the recipient of a 2023 St. Joe Community Foundation Poetry Fellowship from the Longleaf Writers Conference. Her work has appeared in or is forthcoming from Whale Road Review, The Indianapolis Review, Sundog Lit, and elsewhere. Her poetry book Heart Weeds is out from Alien Buddha Press and her chapbook Grief Birds was published by Bullshit Lit in April 2023. Her full-length Cicatrizing the Daughters is forthcoming from FlowerSong Press.