Poetry
Malin Andersson
Småland, When I Close My Eyes
1. Two hands in dark soil, holy water
2. The birch stretching her back, crack, after a long day
3. One shy candle, a fluttering butterfly
4. Chapped, cracking lips on a radiant smile
5. The babbling family of bubbles in a simmering pot
6. Red clay and red houses, built by red cheeks
7. Hands clasped in prayer, dirt under the fingernails
8. The laugh of a forest, exhaling yellow leaves
9. Tears of the stream who does not wish to leave the riverbed
10. Tallies on the wall for each day of winter
11. Clean, blue glass – fresh as melted lake
12. Boots by the fireplace, a satisfied sigh
13. Those hands, once again, when they return to the earth
14. The goodbye they leave behind, and the constellations of remembering
In Copenhagen
we played hopscotch on the cobblestones that led to the river, swinging the shoes and socks of
our former lovers like lassos. We filled a small boat with their letters (I love yous, I miss yous,
and shit like that) and weighed them down with stones from the bank. Our throats were tight –
like they’d been sewn shut with shoelaces – but we still managed to laugh.
When the boat began to sink, we were silent. Hand in hand, we watched the river swallow it and
regurgitate some of the wet paper from those lovers’ letters. We left shortly after that and barrel-
rolled down the cobblestone street until we came upon a patch of grass. You pointed at the bruise
already forming on my shoulder and said it looked like a kite. You kissed my kite, and I kissed
the fan of purple across your elbow we determined to be a rainbow. Lying in the grass, we
caught the dust of a streetlamp in our mouths. After some chewing, we spit the dust out along
with the words we were never supposed to say to each other, but mistakenly did.
Malin Andersson is a poet, writer, and musician living in Michigan. In the past, she has had poems published by the Lloyd Scholars for Writing and the Arts, a short story published by Writer to Writer Literary Journal, and had a self-published children’s poetry chapbook titled Hello From Earth released. In addition, her poetry manuscript and thesis, Breadcrumbs, received Highest Honors at the University of Michigan in 2022, and she has both won and was named an honorable mention for the Caldwell Poetry Prize.