Since Then, Like a Wild Thing I Have Grown by Couri Johnson

You’re always sneezing. Your allergies, they’re bad.

Sometimes when we drive together, there are

bubbles of silence so thick that even the radio

can’t needle through them. So,

I asked you to tell me something about myself.

You told me I never say bless you.

There are too many dandelions

on the side of the road, pollinating. It is thick

as mud inside your lungs.

Last night I had a dream my mother was a giant, that

she had gone away and become her own nation.

If I comb my hair back, I can fool everyone.

They will think I am a wolf cub reared by humans,

and they will take me back.

Would that make you laugh? My mother wasn’t

rude, she just didn’t do things the way she should,

in small situations. You said that I don’t say bless you,

and I don’t. I’m glad you noticed, and I’m sorry.

If you want, I could eat the heads off the dandelions

for you, but I like the space your sneezes take up.

If I make you a mixtape of coughs, would

you listen? I need to tell you about that day, I know.

Manners do nothing in the end.

I had kept holding my mother’s hand.

I had kept saying please.

It stayed limp and cold,

like a slice of thawed ham.

Couri Johnson lives in Youngstown, Oh where she is a student of the NeoMFA and is the current head editor of Jenny.  She lives mostly off of sugar and pizza, and people tell her her teeth are offensive.