by Vic Nogay

if you could reach inside my body
through the pupils of my eyes that open
and close to the light like windows, i would open

for you, tear down the blinds, blind
my eyes in the morning sun so you could see,
so you could climb inside, touch

my memories with your fingertips,
pull them out, set them free,
hang each one,

deftly, on the low limbs
of an oak in the summer
by the river, to bleach out in the sun.

a toad perched on a rock
by the water and a dove swimming
in the leaves of the tree will pretend

not to watch
you leaf through me
like a sacred relic.

there will be no
museum or sterile box
for these.

shade the trees with memory,
honor me with sun
light—even if i burn.

Vic Nogay is a Pushcart Prize- and Best Microfiction-nominated poet and writer whose work appears in Fractured Lit, Barren Magazine, and Lost Balloon, among others. Her micro chapbook of poems, under fire under water, was published in 2022 by tiny wren publishing. She is an Associate Poetry Editor for Identity Theory and lives in Columbus, Ohio. Find her online at vicnogay.com