WHEN I WAS FOUR
to be seen & not heard
When I was knee-bruised and exploding like yellow from my mouth. When my body was all punches and stiff kisses. When my belly started to feel like a hill to climb. When I wasn’t ready for the rain to come. I was at arms, living for combat, and he taught me the alphabet of silence. At first, I thought it was a game, a hide-and-seek—I spit my words out backwards, my throat spellbound & tangled. I stopped asking questions. Instead, my fingers grew toward a creation of answers: the sky wasn’t blue, the walls all had headaches, there weren’t any trees. Colors existed only on paper, only to be whispered between me & whatever figure of God I was taught to love. That world was like underwater, like a chamber of safety, free of gravity, of noise. I swam alone. I washed my face in that type of wilt—all my new scars were absorbed into that chamber. The game became an exercise in consumption. I ate my words. But I wish I could tell him now: If you cut out my tongue, I will write you a letter.* I wish I could tell him: an animal’s thoughts don’t spill like logic, the magic of coral can’t be undone. I am not seasonal, I cannot drift out to sea like this.
Maeve Holler is a poet from Shelton, Connecticut. She is currently the Managing Editor for the literary magazine Sinking City and a third year MFA candidate at the University of Miami. She received her BA in English and Gender & Sexuality Studies from Tulane University in New Orleans. Maeve’s work, which focuses on depicting working-class experiences and retelling familial folklore, has appeared in Leveler, Scalawag, The Cardiff Review, Wildness, Mantra Review, Lotus-Eater Magazine, T.NY’s The EEEL, Broad! Magazine and elsewhere. Her in-progress manuscript won GASHER Journal’s First Book Scholarship in June 2019.
*line from Tory Dent’s poem “The Murder of Beauty / The Beauty of Murder”
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