Cassidy Fesmire

A Satin Covered Stomach

The bed beneath our bodies is begging
for the sheets back you cannot stop
pulling the sliver of satin shoved between your teeth
and I am much too awake to pretend I do not feel my spine
bending into the divorced wood of your parent’s bed frame

it is weird you love the past like
you are not alive in the present

I could remove every splinter and burn all the
sheets and the mattress still would only hold
you leaving me with nothing but the memory of
satin sheets I gave you when you told me your

mom never liked a bed not dressed in cotton
waiting for heavy hands to take her into
subjectivity she is a bed bred in violence
painted in poppies praying no one begins to
see the chilling internality you started
cutting holes in our sheets now poppies of cotton
cover the floor as the seeds slide across my toes

I feel it now what once was a flower sewn into
bedsheets is now the devil which sustains me I
take every flower every missing shoe on the
street every animal every piece of trash every
pothole and shove them all between my teeth
and tell you I finally swallowed our satin sheets.


Cassidy Fesmire is an undergraduate English writing major at Lipscomb University. Cassidy finds herself deeply concerned with the human experience and wishes to communicate her own lived experiences in a way that helps her audience feel less alone inside their souls. Cassidy craves to influence and impact the lives of those who are fighting the battles she continues to face each day, for she never was afforded the chance to find community inside her sufferings.