a kitchen

by Sam Moe

There is a kitchen beneath my mattress, tucked

away over the years, there are pots of flavor and

silver mussels, gold minnows, cookies shaped 

like eyes, there are garlic hearts hanging from the

ceiling, cubes of thunder on the cutting board.

I am invited to prepare a phoenix heart, I am

unprepared for tenderness and the secrets, which

escape when I make the first cut, this is how you

recreate my universe. Someone’s telling me

not to ruin things this time, someone hands me

Verde artichoke hearts, crying tomatoes, reborn

leaves and a puffer fish, I am the saunter and the

sonder, I am losing to chocolate-covered lobster

shells, I learn to recreate my heart from scratch,

following a recipe etched on the dining room

table. 

Sam Moe (she/her) is a writer of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. She is pursuing a PhD in creative writing at Illinois State University. Her work has appeared in Overheard Lit Mag, Cypress Press, and others. She received an Author Fellowship from Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing in June, 2021.