"I did not come back from Hell with empty hands"

I brought back his

sawed-off hand—

those fat fingers,

massive wolf worms

I dreamt of most

of my life,

larvae that entered

through my eye,

feasted, grew fat

on tropical punch Kool-Aid

and brown sugar

cinnamon Pop-Tarts,

then festered,

refused metamorphosis.

Why would they change

when they can stay

and gorge themselves

on innocence?

I did not come back from Hell with empty hands,

but I brought back

this deck of moldy playing cards,

a broken whiskey bottle,

years of silence,

a bag of bad weed

laced with panic attacks,

empty shotgun shells,

pictures of that old house,

a twin mattress

dirtied with trauma,

a bucket of catfish guts,

gaping wounds fit

for a king, covered

with lace doilies

they bled straight through.

Why do we make

such poor attempts

to rid ourselves

of the past,

all the while believing

we can hide, forget it

under a pile of old T-shirts?

-by Jessica Sampley, published in Oberon Poetry 2022