slough

 by Molly Kathryn Fisher

coffee-stained canines tear through sweet, 

slurpy strawberry skin, 

               gorging guts, 

a seed-

swallowing prayer that these vines may 

grow in the hollow of my stomach and 

tangle my

loose threads               together, that my mouth

may froth with sugar instead of blood, 

but 

my throat chokes on the saccharine 

sickly

slide 

down.

                                     my sheets stain red. 

please please pretend

i’m a nice woman.

please wake me when my headache

breaks. 

Molly Kathryn Fisher is a writer based in the Chicagoland area, earning a BA in Literature from North Central College. Winner of the 2022 and 2023 Ruth Cooley Poetry Prize, her poems “my stream of consciousness fails the bechdel test” and “Disco Ball Blues” are featured on poets.org. Her work also appears in Moonflake Press, The Erozine, and the fridge at her parents’ house. Molly is fond of Carole King, the color green, and feeling too much.