sam, son

she traced his sleep, shallow breather, shadow mountain, wound through the ribs of his sheetless night. his heavy hair clutching his moon full breasts. her other hand, underpillow, clasped her mother’s good pair of scissors. cold metal like the cat’s gaze, which carved her out from the silence. bracing his scalp, she tugged all his hair into eight spreading braids. snagged an elastic. snapped. she uphaled, ready, but their forked ends were drooping with heat. and she, no, stay. she, oh, fell asl / until his breath gurgled, gug, the undoing ropes flexing and writhing into his — glint — with both of her hands, with all of her weight, she hacked, closer and closer, to his skull, his skin, and where she slammed the two blades into one, each hair brittled then sparked - delilah the first morning, in apricot light - the single hair they pulled out from deep in her throat - that time the moon went unspilled for a week - his left thigh, sweetsticky as rice - her fist, abrim with the scrunchie they lost. and then the strands wilted. and it was dark. he gulped awake, eyes haloing his face, hands haloing his clumsy new head. saw her, seeing him, and crushed into his palms, because the thing about potential energy is it doesn’t unshatter. but she clung to his shoulders, tried to smooth his blunt hair, said, i know, i knew. and she did. she knew from following the veins up his arms, from fitting her ear into his, from wishing her wishes onto his eyelids. so he let her hold on, fingers tight as attention, let her whisper the truths that condensed up his neck: sam, son, samson, samsonsamson,

émilie kneifel is everyone (a critic) at Adroit, PRISM, Exclaim!, The Puritan, Bearded, Debbie, and Phluff. their poems-etc whip-or-will in Bad Nudes, Vallum, Canthius, Tiny Essays, and Theta Wave.