This piece was first published in Quarto’s 2023 Spring Print Edition.
Illustration by Watson Frank
In earlier versions of this poem
I began with the moon. And how
she made windows from the maple
space and how you loved cranberries,
especially frozen, and how I once
believed you could teach the road signs
how to swim. Back then silence was still
something we could suck inside a twisty
straw and I was keeping rocks alive.
He drove a car that became a truck
and as he slowed down I remembered
Octopuses have three hearts and the
neighbors were away and headlights
are yellow teeth – they will rot if you’re
not careful. In earlier versions of this poem
I said my fingers pressed into your
thigh and I spun pipe wings from car
exhaust but mostly I remember Mary,
in the yard, your mother’s statue, hands bright
with lichen and how she made our burning
lungs sound like prayers. And how he sent us
scrambling for a porch. In school we read
about the dog they sent to space, she died
with starlight down her gullet, except
maybe it was just emptiness and I used to
wonder why tiny things look for homes in
their reflection – until I got my answer. And
they built her a casket of media – I’m sorry,
I didn’t mean to awaken, blinking, buried
arm deep in the electric dirt. I don’t mean
to write a poem about her. I meant to wonder
if he has children and if he noticed my
friendship bracelets and your missing
tooth and if that’s why he let us run.
Or if he was being kind – in his own way –
and we flew too fast and left him staring
at his own far starlight, his own pencil-tip
planet earth. God, I’m sorry, I keep writing
poems about her. I wish I carved more names
in baseboards and dried those recital flowers
and tried to be more than a body of guilt.
I wish I had two hearts, so I could give you
one and then you’d have three and then
you would be an Octopus.
Phoebe Mulder (she/her) is a first-year at Barnard majoring in English, but please don’t hold her to that.