These two poems by Jennifer Fox explore the ways in which we escape trauma, pain, and sometimes ourselves…
by: Jennifer Fox
Unzip Me
Unzip me.
Let me step outside this skin
and feel the wind lick buried scars.
Let me scatter like
a thousand silver threads
shimmering in the clouds.
Let me rise like heat from the asphalt,
a long, blurred line
dancing through the trees.
Let me be the cold space
between raindrops,
that thin, sharp air
no one has breathed yet.
And when I feel
the low hum of the world below,
my skin calling me home like a winter coat,
let the zipper stick.
The sky fits better anyway.
Origami
i fold myself in
one corner at a time,
tucking scars into seams.
beneath this crease, his fingerprints
an ink stain on my thigh.
under this one, a child’s voice
choked by disbelief.
fold. crease. repeat.
for a moment i am
smoothed clean with a sharp swipe
of my thumbnail along the fold.
but smaller.
we made paper cranes as children,
coaxing squares of paper into flight
with our fingers.
i could’ve become one,
glided away, weightless on a whisper,
but i forgot the pattern.
folded it away with everything else.
how many times can i smooth the line
and call it new,
before what’s left of me
can’t be unfolded
until i’m small enough
to be forgotten
too.
Jennifer Fox holds an MFA from Lindenwood University. Her writing appears in Identity Theory, Maudlin House, Stanchion, Ghost Parachute, Brilliant Flash Fiction, Bending Genres, and elsewhere. She is a Best Microfiction nominee and is currently working on her first novel. X: @jennfoxwriter
