A poem by Sofia Sears

Working in a grocery store with a girl too wide for this town and this world

and she looks down too often.

Tearing through old heaps of mail to find reluctant bills with too many words

I forgot how to react to

the blood on the television and the croaking bullets that land outside my window like frogs splashing into a cool pond

the wind closes the door when I get up to see who’s outside

I don’t know how to

see the boy I used to kiss whose arms are bitten by wolves, he’s said, but I know that the wolves are just his kitchen knives

I can’t listen to

the girl crying behind me in the movie theatre when the man beside her squeezes her wrist so hard even I see colors

I want to

lose this world inside of someone who loves me.

but the American nightmare steals all meek whispers of “touch me” from this

worn-out and washed-dry heart.