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"We Were Twisted Ladders" & "The Hollows for the [Motherless] Stars" by Leslie Cairns



We Were Twisted Ladders


DNA Stores memory;

I wonder what my body thinks of me.


A molecular blueprint–

Find me where the veins meet prairie,

And you’ll find the way I held my fingers, intertwined

With the dying. The way I held my sister’s lap and sang to her 

A Bushel & A Peck, a hug around the neck,

As my ribs concave–

And I knew I’d have to leave her, eventually.


We are double helixes, a spiral curve,

Like the vertebrae that hurt 

Before the storms cross from your state to mine, across highways

Mowed down by water.

The water that made us, I suppose.

Or, I suppose, the order doesn’t matter.

The spiral curves of fingerprints

Remind me of ice skaters twisting with their frozen bodies

Around the archways of the pond

On a winter day, learning how to do a triple

Axle. Learning how to fall to fly,

Learning how to hold their ankle way up high– learning that

They bend

And do not break.


I pass down my heritage

Even if my heritage forgets me.

A string, a shape that molds

Before we understood the meaning behind our names.

Before we understood

That the way my body was formed

Came from my Mom

But not what she gave me.


We are twisted ladders

Of cells we cannot see, name from a lens

Of looking that we don’t fully understand. The microscope tells us we’re all the same, yet unique. So, when I cry

Do you hear me?

When I change, do you feel that I lost

What made me?


If I could, I’d go in & pluck

Out weary, violin strings

Of meaning. Make me more compassionate here,

Make the brain forget that day she told me I didn’t matter,

There. I close my eyes and I almost feel the way she whispered me into existence,

And then forgot to hold the rest in her hand, forgot the path to find

What makes me, me. Telling me to stop writing

Stop dreaming

And to stand with two feet

The feet she made

And I should,

I should,

Be grateful for that.



The Hollows for the [Motherless] Stars


I would pop popcorn, even though it wasn’t a safe food. I’d say the word mother and hear all the vowels. “Why do you watch that filth?” She’d say from the corner. But for an hour, it didn’t matter where I was. For an hour, she would braid my hair and tell me that boys don’t matter – shopping does – and that when we fight we look cute after, and make up. Sure there’s that season where they go adrift too – but everything repairs itself again – with a burger and a coffee. I can repair myself, in only a man – if someone – asks me to coffee. If someone – anyone – makes me a Santa burger. If someone – anyone – tells me I look like Rory, but act like her in season one.

And I pop my poptarts and laugh in strawberry–

And I braid my own hair, the crumbles falling on the floor. I don’t pick them up right away, and laugh about sugar toes and dreams aplenty. Pretend it’s lint instead of moms on screens, pretend I’m made of air and eat carbs and no one will make fun of me –

Pretend there are worlds where women are strong,

And mothers wrap their arms around them, and only miss a beat for a season,

And swing around again.


(And, yes, I’m not a Dean).




A Note from the Author: I enjoy writing about random pop/medical culture, and trying to extrapolate on those ideas into feelings.

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