I tell my friend I’m reading Anaïs Nin’s diary and she thinks I mean in real time

Sam Moe

There is another mass shooting and I wake up from nightmares someone has climbed into my office at school, watching me from the rafters. I tell my students if they’re exhausted that’s valid, but I don’t know how to tell them to protect themselves when there is no protection. They are quiet and tired, they read the news and have reactions I’ll never know or be able to predict. In the afternoon I tell myself life still has meaning as I am able to eat a bowl of ramen noodles. I keep giving my food away until I realize I haven’t eaten a meal in many days, my stomach turns in on itself, it’s difficult to watch my body as it performs upon a stage, always too full of shame to be genuine, I am a turtle, I think to myself I am a gale wind, but there is someone in the doorway of my office and I need to put the shame away. Anyway, I’ll eat later, with a writer I don’t know, he tells me I need to find community, I need to write clearly, I need to set boundaries. I’m half listening as I eat the reddest burger on the planet, everything is blood and taste and sizzle, I imagine boundaries in my mind made of many trees, no one will be able to find their way through these forests, there is no magic to coax a path, I want to tell him I’m so sorry, he has children who I hope will be able to grow up, I want them to be their best, I tell him offhandedly that I want to be a mother; he doesn’t respond. I am violently shining, reflecting from my cool grey surface, don’t want real love-love, don’t come inside and put the fires out, protect each other, I am nothing more than an infection. A fungal spore you touched in the pond which followed you home, I will grow on your hands to know how they move, I will belong to you until you discard me, I will have nightmares, I will never be a mother, I wish my ancestors were listening to me but lately the rivers run dry. Each time I enter a room I think about where I might hide my body. Each time I enter a conversation I think about how to make myself so small, like a little mouse you tell your secrets to, I am a sardine in a can hearing an argument, I am a droplet of alcohol spilled on an unsuspecting spider’s web, this, too, is a shimmering mirror for an eight-legged friend, I tell my students to explain to me the smallest I could possibly be and they tell me stories about atoms, again I am distracted, I need to go to the doctor. Later at coffee I tell my new colleague and friend I have been reading Anaïs Nin’s diary and she thinks I mean I’ve stolen a friend’s diaries and read them. I spend several minutes allowing her to be right before I interject that Anaïs Nin is dead and together we laugh, how cruel would that be to read someone’s secrets in real time. We both eat chocolate-filled croissants and talk about fear. She has beautiful long hair which she combs her fingers through and I do the same, with my own hair. I want to let her in but I don’t. I hope one day we’ll be able to sit together to watch storms sweep across the lawn. 

Sam Moe is the recipient of a 2023 St. Joe Community Foundation Poetry Fellowship from Longleaf Writers Conference. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Whale Road Review, The Indianapolis Review, Sundog Lit, and others. Her first full-length collection, Heart Weeds, was published with Alien Buddha Press (Sept. ’22) and her second full-length collection Grief Birds was published with Bullshit Lit (Apr. ’23). Her third full-length Cicatrizing the Daughters is forthcoming from FlowerSong Press.