Muscle Memory
How many people have refolded this same page
that I am folding now above a poem
clean as the mountaintop? A vantage point
that connects aloneness with everything?
Even my bones know what I’m going to do before I do it.
Rinse Repeat
Why are we humans so forgetful? Every spring
is the first spring. Every winter is interminable.
When I am tired, it is the first time. My brain
equates tiredness with sadness, my brain thinks
it has never been comforted. Every tear is the first—
every poem is the last I’ll ever write.
Esther Sadoff is a teacher and writer from Columbus, Ohio. She is the author of four chapbooks: Some Wild Woman (Finishing Line Press), Serendipity in France (Finishing Line Press), Dear Silence (Kelsay Books), and If I Hold my Breath (Bottlecap Press). She was nominated for a Pushcart Prize by Hole in the Head Review, and she is the winner of the Women of Ohio 2025 Poetry Award.
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