If betrayal is a small word; rot
Camouflaging as change; if I
Lost the bare feet you loved;
If my spine grew spikes; kiss
The pictures of me you put
In the cookie tin with the exes
I’d like to press my ex-body
Into stratified, metamorphic
Dishwater — what? No, I’m not
mad — I’m just not here; leave
a — sure, cheese, just not salty —
Remember the toy trains we lost
In the move? Small movement: turn
one around & the magnets repulse.
Mariya (Masha) Deykute is a Russian-American poet, editor and translator. She is a graduate of the UMass: Boston MFA program and currently teaches rhetoric and creative writing in Nur Sultan, Kazakhstan. She is the co-founder and chief editor of the trilingual journal Angime. Her work in English has most recently appeared in Asymptote, PANK, notokens, Tiger Moth Review and Seventh Wave. Her work in Russian has most recently appeared in polutona and Literranova: an anthology of Almaty writing. Mostly, she writes about the wilderness that exists inside and alongside all of us.
