How many times can I tell this story before it corrodes. I am tired, I don’t know who I am anymore. I wake in the middle of the night and stare at a water glass. What would my life be if I had stayed? If I hadn’t swapped visual art for creative writing. The questions are useless. They are not even right. Lately I’ve been in need of gentleness. I’m terrified to talk to my colleagues, my students, my friends, my mother. My partner. There are people still in my life who break things. Who shatter objects and shout at me until I begin peeling my skin off. I cannot stop yet. Does anyone respect me, or do they think I am too fragile? Only an abnormal person would say, please be gentle with me, I’ve been having a long week. Shouldn’t I perform better? Stronger? What do other professors do. I try to ask my colleagues, and they tell me I need a good therapist. I try to tell my therapist, and she says, but why? Why do you feel this way? Don’t you realize these people don’t care about you? Do you see how this is a pattern? Why do you keep repeating yourself? She asks me so many questions I become a fraction of myself. Tired body. How do I recover? Mother tells me I push everyone away because I love them too much. She says I am needy, and people can see all that want on my body, which only makes them ill. I am not good. I am fractured and most days, I am sick. But I would never say such a thing to someone. Perhaps that is something I can take pride in. Even though I made many mistakes in this foolish life, I would never say an intentionally hurtful sentence to another person during their depression. I would never make fun of their death drive or their tears. I wouldn’t pretend, like my friend often does, to jump out the window. I would listen. And if anyone let me stay, I would sit by them in an old green field. We could look at the sky and name clouds after our favorite pets. The breeze might carry the scent of wildflowers. I could fly into the bright swath of blue with my scars dissolving like cherry popsicles melting in the sun.

Sam Moe is the author of six books of poetry. Her most recent collection, RED HALCYON, is forthcoming from Querencia Press in 2026. Her debut short story collection, I MIGHT TRUST YOU, is forthcoming from Experiments in Fiction in Spring 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 received writing residencies from The Writers’ Colony at Dairy Hollow and Château d’Orquevau.