by SG Huerta
I’m telling myself to calm down so that I don’t jump off of or out of anything when I was two I jumped off a slide I said catch me no one caught me my sister didn’t catch me it wasn’t her fault but my leg still had a buckle fracture I still had to relearn to walk in the way my mother did after her total hip replacement I’m telling myself calm down but I really won’t listen I won’t listen I can’t listen my eardrum burst in the sixth grade blood & pus seeping down my neck blood & pus overwhelming the cotton the after-hours clinic nurse shoved in my ear why can’t I just shove cotton in my ears & cure myself it’s because cotton is a temporary fix there are no cures here only treatments in the form of stopping blood & pus & mania & psychosis from pouring out of your head but part of my head was flat when I was a baby so the doctors gave me a helmet & to this day my glasses sit crooked & my jaw juts out to the side.
SG Huerta is a Chicana poet from Dallas. They are pursuing their MFA at Texas State University and live in Texas with their cat Lorca. SG is the author of the chapbook The Things We Bring with Us: Travel Poems (Headmistress Press, 2021). Their work has appeared in perhappened, Kissing Dynamite, and various other places. Find them at sghuertawriting.com or on Twitter @sg_poetry
Emerge Literary Journal 