Karen Baumgart September 2024
after Stephanie Greene
there was a time when simple fears
curled serpentine behind cupboard doors
or hid, damply drooling, beneath the bed:
conventional horrors that played by the rules.
everyone was fleeing from something;
pare a child back to their soft-knit bones
and you will find most of the monsters
look much the same
until one doesn’t
until it finds a crack, a wound,
an entry point in childish softness
and gnaws, ravenous, from the inside out,
leaving skin like paper and eyes like stones.
there is a damp, coarse heat
that comes with running away
– a granular sheening of skin,
stickily crusting at the eyelashes –
I wonder how you can bear to touch
the dried salt-tracks along my cheek,
a gritty cartography of nightmares
that burrowed into bone, and stayed there.
such a monster cannot be easily severed. instead,
I gather joy, bathe in hope’s fragrant petals,
prop open the door
wait patiently for it to leave.
Karen Baumgart lives in Australia and adores beautiful quotes, pink things, cats, and chai tea. She loves working in human services policy, especially when it enables marginalised people to have a voice. Karen used to be an English teacher, and is quite certain that writing is, indeed, the best therapy. She can be found on Instagram @miss.cake.girl and Twitter @cake_girl__.
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