I would bang the egg of my forehead
against bathroom walls
Sunday mornings. ✝
My parents would drop me at Amy’s
then over coffee cake and orange juice they’d whisper
“We sure do love her, but—”

I had a dream last night Amy.
We were holding hands walking
by the side of Route 55
and you fell into a big hole and I couldn’t reach you
and you stopped yelling and I woke up
wet with sweat I woke up
over-heated.

We stomped ants in the courtyard then
we learned to stuff our bras with tissue
and her sister showed us how to take it out
before, you know, and “wipe up too,” and
Amy had arm hair in a pattern like wind through wheat
and Derek had no arm hair at all but she still kissed him and
practiced kissing on me once and once I let her touch
the crack in my bedroom window where cold
air
seeps
through. Amy —

I had a dream last night.
I was trying to drown a white goose
But he was too buoyant.
I kept pushing his neck down in the pond.
Like a pool noodle, he popped up
the same

way.

Cris Iacoponi is a Philadelphia-based queer poet. Her work focuses on Surviving (with that capital S) trauma, mental illness, and capitalism. She runs the A-Space Poetry Workshop, and has been published in over eight literary journals including Lavender Review, Crooked Arrow Press, and Tenderness Lit. You can keep up to date with her work @crispoems on instagram.