by Sam Moe
If you’re fine with the decay, we can be remarkable. I tell you
about the architecture which consumes my mind, and you think
I’m so smooth, how could a house follow someone so far out into
fields where abandoned wells stand, dotting the landscape with dry
patches of grass, the occasional circling of small purple flowers I
used to pluck and tie together in wreaths for my grandfather’s
head, but what about the way the porches wrap and snap until
they connect in one looping square, and their surfaces are coated
in all the toads and frogs from the swamp down the street, the bog
in the backyard, did you know I’m keeping my heart safe for you
if you don’t mind the hauntings then we can head out together
traverse the floors of the ancient and many-floored house with its
beautiful rouge carpets, the mermaids stamped into the foyer, the way
the kitchen has a habit of growing waxy plastic leaves in coils and its
shadow, a second smaller kitchen, is covered in boughs of ivy and empty
pots and pans, beneath lives twisting floors like too-soft bricks, no one
knows where to put their cigarette ashes, I want you to take the glasses
gently from my face and know their designated spot on the nightstand
my heart wants, ragged with haunt, and while you’re at it could you watch
my back as we descend, I think if I reached for your hand I would twist
turn to ash in an instant. And inside these walls which contain the history
of the house itself a thousand endless movements crushed in liminal
spaces where ghost lobsters and demon crabs glow unnatural shades of
amber and azure there is a pasture of velvet, there is a ladder, we ascend
between thin layers of kitchens, stacked as one boiling cake on top of
another and I’m desperate to make it out of the maze alive—with you by
my side—and if you don’t mind the way I scratch at my chest when I can’t
breathe, if you, too, cover all the surfaces during a storm, if you house
ruined horses, if you have soft stars in jars atop your highest cabinets,
and might you also have a beehive with a pool of honey where the bugs
can swim, and did you know there is another four-letter word for love
but it hasn’t been revealed yet, but would you guess I have something
else written on my tongue for you, and could you put away your teeth
to listen, but would you take care to not insult the ghosts who have never
left this place, so I guess we arrive together, intertwined like strands or rope
or hands, we could make it through, you and I, and if we live to see oceans
together, would you know to lead me along where it hurts? Would you
trust the best shells are a little further out, leave your broken shards in the
expertly labeled foyer drawers, then maybe we can make it through just
fine, maybe we’ll drive like darling flames to lick the salt into soup bowls
and stationary holders, well did you know there is a demon holding the core
of this home and every time she hears me laugh she shakes, it only serves to
bump us closer together, my teeth accidentally brushing your earlobe, I’m
going to break your heart if that’s okay, I’m going to stoke your crush into a
bonfire.
Sam Moe is the first-place winner of Invisible City’s Blurred Genres contest in 2022, and the 2021 recipient of an Author Fellowship from Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing. Her first chapbook, “Heart Weeds,” is out from Alien Buddha Press and her second chapbook, “Grief Birds,” is forthcoming from Bullshit Lit in April 2023. You can find her on Twitter and Instagram as @SamAnneMoe.
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