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My mother talked about
Oceans as if they were ponds.
She longed for that underwater weight,
An obstinate reminder of
The body free
Of gravity and expectation. Suspended
Right here
Right now
Until black spots clouded into
Nothing.
Dad talked about the ocean when you weren’t around,
Laughed about the time you tried
To sink your bones beneath the waves
With my roots growing deep into your
Belly that never knew soil.
How scared you must have been.
Dad joked about your thumbs,
How instead of green, they contained blue.
You killed every houseplant you owned.
Drowned them until
Their hollow husks rotted in swampy soil.
For your 30th birthday, we knew what you needed.
We drew you a bath so hot and so deep
That you disappeared for weeks
Inside a catacomb of amniotic fluid.
You emerged
Yourself
In the ill-fitting suit that was your skin.
Until dad finally closed the tub.
He said there was a leak
But didn’t specify if the leak was in
The tub
Or in you.

Grief is the greatest melody
Humanity was bestowed upon
Simply because suffering
Of someone’s absence
Is the greatest pain
Anyone will tend to avoid
But will silent void themselves in.

Every ending starts with death,
But catapults into someone else’s
To a broken-hearted heartbreak
Which knows no boundaries
Falling into a universal abode.

Goodbyes are bid only once,
Sometimes missed, ignored, avoided
But a last farewell is envious
Because no matter how it pains,
One shall always think of that moment,

A memory that sticks to the heart
And sinks to the mind.

Love is your blood that provides life equally to all…
and not only for the ones who see themselves…
as the evil center of your divine creation…

Oh loving mother!

Your sole existence was created
by the most powerful love ever.
Universe dust particles forming
your unique body and spirit.

Every vital and needed element
by land and water living beings
resides in your flesh and blood
for them to be motherly fed.

Oh warm shelter!

Cosmos, landslides, avalanches, floods,
may fall on or drag my trembling being
that I will fear not ‘cause your steady love
will protect me and be my refuge.

Your breath has been a breeze on my face,
your heartbeat has been energy in my body,
your green is not only food but a loving home,
your living sounds have become bedtime singing.

Oh sweet home!

Resting gently in your loving arms
so I can wash all my worries away
because you’ve created a nest, warm,
for me to learn how to fly today.

Breathing fresh air of freedom,
drinking renewing water of life,
feeding myself with your green flesh,
I make my way in your womb.

Oh great family!

We’re all siblings of the same mother,
different creatures with the same skin
made of grass, rind, flesh and more,
for us to feel proud of our unique image.
We’re all bounded by natural desires
and will of a great spirit who’s decided
we fight together, and as a whole we stand,
to make each other feel alive, upraised head.

Oh uncertain future!

Why do we have to hurt you, mother?
Why this need to destroy your beauty?
Why have we become ungrateful children?
Why have we exchanged life for death?

Is there a redemption for all sins against you?
Do you still keep some love to renew things?
Are we on time to make and be the difference?
When will we unblind our eyes to start reconstruction?

Mother, please forgive us for what we have done to you.
Please, let our new generations learn the way to you… with you.

My father’s twin brother died twice.
First in 1965, seven days after their births,
then in 2013 when their mother died.
Her body was held in a small coffin
like paper kept inside a printer.
Years of paralysis made her stomach
a drum and legs needles.
Her wrinkled skin tucked to bones,
a decayed pear.

I couldn’t think of anything else uglier
than her death that day, but my father
paced like a hungry hyena in the funeral home,
swearing that he saw his newborn twin brother.
My father tried to wake his mother
for answers—how did one die
and the other survive, go to school,
have a child.

Deep in the nights when he
drank again, he saw his brother
who demanded to switch lives. I joked
that I’d be more than glad
to have someone else be my dad.

Now seeing my father age, faster year by year,
reminds me of the last glance
at a wrinkled body and the smell of putrid flesh.
I remember my father’s face,
toward the flame, resembled lost fawns.

Grip remains, strong arm, taught.
Holding on to dreams, as the
Whisps of smoke seep from the
Cracked and creased fists.
If it was a mere moment I caught
And held onto as the other
Moments slipped away,
Like grasping at water and sand;
Then it was worth the
Very act of movement.
The softness of the silken
Lips that I once kissed.
They have taken me,
taken my life and
Made sense of the words
I used to hear. Words;
Brushing past me like the
Sound of breeze in the trees.
The softening sound of air.
I wish so much you could stay.
I wish it so much I pray
For the day when
We meet again.

wind lifts a tarp from a half-wrecked car
floats cottonwood seeds to my neighbor’s pool
once host to dangling feet
beer bottle clink
and barbecue smoke

on a narrow stretch of the continent
birds flew from cactus nests
to an empty beach
I peeled a mango in the bathroom sink
slept to the sounds of a ceiling fan

in a dream I searched a road through the woods
for a dog that had jumped from the back of a truck
I saw the papery husk of a garter snake
my ankles snared in baling twine
parts of myself long extinct

Bio:

Samantha Malay’s poetry was recently published in Heading In and Out: Transient Life Poems (Poets’ Choice, 2024) and Mantis. Steel Toe Books short-listed her chapbook Realm (2023), and Shark Reef Magazine nominated her poem Between for a Pushcart Prize (2020). She grew up in rural northeastern Washington state, where her family built a cabin with timbers salvaged from an abandoned homestead, hauled water from a creek, and read by kerosene lamp. Her experiences in that time and place continue to shape her work. Her published words can be found at https://samanthamalay.com/.

I think of you that last day
Happy–probably drunk,
but I couldn’t tell
(I never could).
You were having such a good
time plotting a prank on an old
friend’s son over a soccer jersey.

You were happy that moment,
a slice between 2 and 2:15 while
we talked. Me, at work far away,
and you, in our house in the pines.
I promised to try
sending a document to the park,
so you could work again that
summer, the one you never saw.

At the light on Eastern Ave
And Eastern Boulevard (yes–
there is such a triangle where
the street cars once turned
around because it was all dirt
roads after–only trees and river),
I got the first call.

At the light made at east and
east, where street cars turned
yet stopped running late in the
fifties, years before we were born
on the same year but a number
of bus stops apart,
I got that first call.

It doesn’t really matter where
you are when life stops. You can
be driving alone when a huge oak
throws itself into your path, like
that man who lives up the road
when we lost power last week.
Bless him for living through it.
That tree toppling from sodden
Anchors lifting after a hundred
years of holding on like I might
have, but no, I left you there.

Was there a short in the wall to
make the house burn that hot?
Bent frame of a sofa bed tossed
out the pictured window that blew
fire into the woods and alerted the
neighbors. How long did you burn?

Or when fate takes the bridge right
out from underneath you like the Key
crumbled and tumbled six souls, like
overripe berries into the cereal bowl
of the harbor–rocks, asphalt, metal,
trucks, and men,
crashing down and snatched by
the current or trapped in metal.

I hope they died quickly–without
knowing, like they tell me you did.

I hope that woman who was abducted
outside the mall where she laughed
with friends moments before, knew nothing
after she was struck in the head and thrown
into the trunk of the car.

I hope it was lights out. Nothing more.

Today at Eastern and Eastern,
I pause and hope the phone fails to ring.
I hold my breath, mumble-whisper
a Hail Mary–pray for us, sinners, now
and at the hour of our death.
(Mary and my hopes know each other well
these days.) The light changes and I drive on,
holding my breath as I pass the restaurant
where I pulled over that night unable to shift
our little car anymore–

all confusion. Trying to ring you and hearing
it go to message. So fast. They say your were
gone then. Smoke and heart, heat and gin–
all bad decisions. We all make them. We all
drive through intersections without knowing

What is Grief?
is it the sadness that creeps in when reality sets once again that you won’t be picking up on
the other end.

What is Grief?
Is it the waves of anger that wash over whenever I feel robbed by time or is it that you were
able to get out before I could get my answers to questions that seem to keep popping up in
my mind?

What is Grief?
The regrets that I didn’t reach forgiveness faster?
Jealous of the memories others had I was after?

Is it making amends to pretend I’m at peace that I won’t get to dance with my father again??

My favorite teacher taught me the greatest lesson in the form of grief.
He taught me he died for you and me.
In your death you resurrected all the ways I was again.

Grief made me proud to have learned what I did.

Grief made me reach for the poetry within.

Grief made me cherish the legacy you left behind.

GRIEF SHOWED ME YOU WILL ALWAYS BE BY MY SIDE

I didn’t know
What I would say in response
To Death,
Until the words
Left my mouth.

Of course,
Each death within those 11 days
Warranted
Unique reactions.

The first.
To Uncle Bill’s Death I asked,
“Was Someone with him?”
I don’t know why.
It seems the assumption
Is that no one wants to
Die
Alone.
But my mother’s cousin,
David,
Was there.
So comfort should be found
In the destruction
Of his body
By cancer.

The second.
To Daisy’s Death
I believe my first,
And possibly only words
Uttered

Were,
“Holy shit, wait, what the fuck?!”
Though,
It could’ve also have been
Something more along the lines of,
“What the shit?”
All I remember
Is the dropping of my bag
And shoes,
And the haphazard climb
Up to my grieving sister’s
Lofted bed.

The third.
I’m not sure
If I said anything
When Aunt Cookie died.
Like Uncle Bill,
Her death wasn’t
Unexpected
Or tragic
It just was.

I think,
I may have said
“okay.”

How many times? A void so vast it corrodes and lasts…
Just a drop of sticky sugar syrup, calcifying as it casts
Pluck out the crystalline exclamations from the back, where spirit transplants
Can’t seep out… Slow flute of defeat, its melody enchants
From eardrums, pupils, brown tendrils, fossils form where wound grants
To copper-plate time, endless things must be placed in trance…
Dullness, jest