OUST

maddy dietz

I helped you put up these glo-

in-the-dark stars and now I am helping

you take them back down. The putty

sticks to the deep sliced

scar on my thumb;

the time in fourth grade you held 

up a stapler and said

Hold still.

Anyway, the cardboard

boxes studding your carpet are too heavy

to carry alone so we heave them into our arms

together, like they’re children

of ours, and you press me backwards

down the stairs I’m always stumbling

over the edges perhaps

that is something to be concerned

about.

One time you helped

me up a tree just to peel my fingers

up from the bark again.

My mother says you are a lawsuit waiting

to happen and she is three-fifths right.

You are waiting—

Now stop it. That’s enough.

Maddy Dietz is an Interlochen Arts Academy senior who has been storytelling since she learned how to talk. She is the National Student Poet representing the Midwest and has been previously published in Parsec Ink’s Triangulation: Dark Skies Anthology and the National YoungArts 2021 anthology. She greatly enjoys writing titles in all caps.