I dreamt that I reached
My hand through your navel,
Churned your guts with my fingers,
Dug deep,
Charted a course.
Beneath taut skin
Beneath webs of veins,
Beneath sinewy muscle,
Beneath the wreckage of ego,
Beneath the rubble of your past,
Down further and further still.
I found fragments
Of something familiar:
Fears and hopes
Submerged in cynical
Self-doubt, kept at bay
By faintly flickering faith.
I thought I was finally stepping
Off the carousel
Onto solid ground.
You are merely another turn,
The wrong direction.
Samantha Jacobs is an alum of the MFA writing program at Manhattanville College. She has since traded New York winters for the perpetual summer of South Florida. Her work has appeared in Gyroscope Review, GNU Journal, and The Stillwater Review.