Katie Mihalek

Katie Mihalek is a writer living in Somerville, MA. She has earned a M.S. in Medical Sciences from Boston University and is an MFA Candidate at Emerson College in Creative Writing. She is the Editor-in-Chief for Redivider, and her work can be found in Spectrum, Mistake House Magazine, Beyond Words, and others. https://katiemihalek.wixsite.com/mysite  .

Dream of the Fisherwoman’s Wife

I sit on the train and the marsh goes by.
Six AM trip and the water’s surface is misty,
like the time I walked on wooden
bridges over geothermal pools, misty, sky
blue of the rocks underneath the sign
WARNING: hot. If geothermal liquid
looks like how this air settles back into the surface
really, if I break the surface with a finger I don’t
know if the water will sizzle or freeze; it
looks like the sky is flipped into the marsh with all
the morning’s unyielding gray, and yet, yet the train
yields me, passes me through so quick it
looks like all I can do is flick back to when we
washed our toes in another marsh, not far from
here, it’s a little ways off from where I had been on
these train tracks behind me now, it had sand that
looked more like mud and had jellyfish washed up
onto the shore. It was too warm that May
how it’s too cool for this June. Through
the mud we fingered mollusks, broken shells
with cracked sharp middles, softened outside
seaweed coats too cold to touch under
that late sun and in this early gray it’s too early
to think if the tentacles would have stung or been
soft if we touched those too, but the sun felt extra
warm when we, with the marsh, turned past it, it
looked like our faces were so puffy from tears
but it could’ve been sunburn we didn’t quite feel
in that cold, and don’t ever ask me if I’d rather die
by fire or by ice because I’ll say by jellyfish. I’ll go
by those tentacles, clear in the mud and slipped
through the water, I’ll go with them curved
around my thighs, tangled in my hair, my fingers
curved on its rounded bell.

The Matter For You

So here, love, I’m here to say
that the fact of the matter is
when I lay my hands in the weeds it feels
like fisting something tangled
and deep better than
the grass with too short roots
I ripped up too soon
and left in clumps
I just wanted to feel
that tension between my arm
and the ground and the fact

of the matter is I wanted
that drink bad
that night like
I wanted to fall off
the string drawn between
my great-grandpa
me and the bottle
wanted to cut it up
with big scissors
collapse it in
but knew it would
slice up my stitches
and the fact of the matter is
that in medical school they cover
the head and the hands
of the cadaver
because they are
the most human parts.

I don’t know what the sheet
would cover if it were only teachers
in the room but the fact
of the matter is that
the dental hygienist
told me the sign
of gingivitis
is when the gum rolls
up the tooth
and when I heard that fact
I thought of sinking
into the dirt
the way the edges
of a body could beoutlined with little hills
from bending grass kissing
packed earth
like a groundhog dug
around you to get close
but not touch.

I’m sorry I’m fixated
on facts about teeth
but the fact
of the matter is
the pit
of the tooth is actually
alive
and all along before
that histology class
I thought it was a type of bone
but it’s not just bone
it’s too many layers
to remember for that exam
good thing the fact of the matter
is that a common topic of conversation
was how to get rid
of the groundhogs
in the yard

the other fact
my dad and his brother
didn’t want to know
so we all couldn’t know
despite the fact of the matter that
I hate the unknown
is the autopsy result that never happened
or mattered.
This might not be a fully true fact
but I think my family
would all be rained on
rather than cry
which is what happened when
they lifted you from the grass
and lowered you into the ground.

I noticed last week
my dad didn’t set the trap
for the groundhog under his shed,
and the ultimate, laughable, indispensable,
fact of the matter,
is my grandma says
what’s the matter for you
as a way of saying I love you,
will smack your arm
in the most gentle way possible.