Vic Nogay

	in a vision, i hit her. her giggles go silent, her lights short out, the synapses fold as the
	twinkle stars drown in the swollen spaces between blood and brain and skull. she 
	wobbles on her knees in a kitchen chair, two grapes half-chewed in her little mouth, and i
	study the pupils as they spill their ink. i am hollow, and now, so is she.

even in my nightmares, how could i?

you mothers—with your blue-black hearts, with your chewed lips drained of their bloody pout, with your flaming cross-wired webs of rage, with your labyrinth of nightmares that walk with you, waking, with
your knuckle-cracked hands throwing toys, snapping spoons, anything, so long as it’s not her arm—
you mothers never told me how mothering hurts like murder, or that a woman dies long before her body. 

Vic Nogay is an emo poet writing her midwestern misremembrances. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Barren Magazine, Lost Balloon, Emerge Literary Journal, perhappened, Ellipsis Zine, and others. Read more: vicnogay.com.