Big Ones
by Meghan Sterling
I’m dreaming of money and it’s awkward
because I want the feel of silk on sandblasted skin,
my flesh torrid with lotion, unblemished by work.
My horse sense tells me I’m worth at least twice what I’m paid,
If only my bosses would agree. My bosses are: memory, parents,
The dead, schoolteachers, the bully on the playground each year
A different blonde boy. Money could buy me something
That used to hurt where now I feel nothing—an icy puddle
a sky heavy with storms where my hands sought the sun.
Money could buy me the Golden Fleece to shield my loves
from my February heart, black snow in piles along
the sides of a highway. I want money to buy me a heart,
or at least someone to clean my house so I can write.
I’m thinking of money and how it feels to touch it,
although the money I really want is invisible, massive
numbers and lines of zeros that blink on computer screens,
that operate behind plastic cards and glass walls,
is the smell of a clean house, the smell of coming snow.

Meghan Sterling is a poet and marketing writer living in Portland, Maine with her daughter and husband. Her work has been published in Driftwood press, the Chronogram, Balancing Act 2 and elsewhere. Her chapbook, How We Drift, was published in the Fall of 2016 by Blue Lyra Press. For all of her published writings, go to meghansterling.com.