Scar on my Left Arm

Alyx Chandler

Mom yanks our bodies off beds
like Band-Aids. C’mon! We match 

Sunday clothes from dirty piles,
cursing a God that demands

such never-ending worship.
North of Birmingham we greet 

a heat that breaks down arguments
like acid. With love, there is also pain—

then the youth leader leaves, bored
of us starting dares in the parking lot.

We press salt and ice on our forearms, 
watch chemistry melt as someone films 

the burn: the jagged pink patches that
sear for long seconds on each other.

Agony gives us matching scars. No one
screams, because belief is a delusion like 

frostbite, an extremity that digests each 
of us whole. In church we squeeze back

into the pews like mice choked in 
the belly of a copperhead. Amen.  

Alyx Chandler (she/her) is a writer from the South who received her MFA in poetry at the University of Montana, where she was a Richard Hugo Fellow and taught composition and poetry. Her poetry was a finalist for the Michelle Boisseau Poetry Prize with Bear Review and can be found in the Southern Poetry Anthology, Cordella Magazine, Greensboro Review, SWWIM, Anatolios Magazine, Sweet Tree Review, and elsewhere.