Hands
I learned
to measure
every room
by how much
of myself
it could hold.
No one
ever said
make yourself
smaller.
They just
smiled wider
whenever
I did.
Every hand
knew
exactly
where to go.
One
covered
my eyes.
One
covered
my mouth.
By the time
they reached
my throat,
they looked
enough
like mine
that I
stopped
asking
who they
belonged to.
I spent
so many years
keeping
myself quiet
I forgot
hands
were made
for building.
*
Evidence
My grandmother had a scar on her forehead.
I never learned where it came from.
If I asked,
she kept brushing powder across it,
maneuvering her bangs
to cover the small white crater.
My mother had a jagged scar
where they removed a lump
they hoped wasn’t cancer.
Her nose sat slightly crooked
after a younger sibling
caught her in the face
with something that should have
never been left lying around.
My mother had so many scars
I stopped counting.
I have scars on my ankle.
Stretch marks on my feet.
Several scars on my stomach
with more to come.
The dark circles under our eyes
belonged to all three of us.
Bruises, too.
Some arrived after nights
we couldn’t quite explain.
Some we could.
Those we hid especially well.
Generation after generation,
perfecting the precision
of covering what we didn’t want
other people to see.
Now when I think of our scars,
I think of them differently.
Every scar
is proof
that the body
would rather continue
than be beautiful.
*
Covering
My grandmother covered her forehead
with bangs.
Covered her gray hair
with a bottle from the drugstore.
Covered her disappointment
with church.
My mother covered cigarette smoke
with perfume.
Covered bruises
with long sleeves.
Covered loneliness
with men.
Covered vodka
with mints.
Covered anger
with laughter.
I learned early.
Concealer under the eyes.
Smile when people ask.
Say I’m tired.
Say I’m busy.
Say everything’s fine.
Generation after generation,
passing down recipes,
old photographs,
and increasingly creative ways
to disappear.
Nobody taught us this directly.
It lived in the pauses.
In bathroom mirrors.
In half-finished sentences.
In the things nobody asked
and nobody answered.
Sometimes I wonder
what our lives might have looked like
if we had spent half as much time
learning to live
as we did
learning to hide.
*
The Women They Called Strong
The women in my family
were always called strong.
Not because they lifted anything.
Because they carried it.
A husband
who drank.
A mother
who left
long before
she was gone.
Children
who learned
which floorboard
could be trusted.
A house
where the wallpaper
held
more smoke
than sunlight.
Strength,
I was taught,
looked like
setting one more place
at the table.
Answering
when someone called your name,
even if
they only ever used it
to ask
for something.
The women
I come from
could tell
when a door
was about to slam
by the way
the air changed.
Could hear
forgiveness
being expected
before anyone
said
I’m sorry.
They folded grief
into fitted sheets.
Pinned smiles
to church dresses.
Learned
that silence
pressed flatter
than linen.
People admired them.
Said they had
good hearts.
Said they were
the kind of women
who never gave up.
No one asked
what giving up
might have saved.
I inherited
their endurance.
It still startles me
how often
my first instinct
is to stay.
Not because
I am loved.
Because I was taught
that leaving
was what weak women did.
I am trying
to inherit
something else.
Just the quiet belief
that a door
can also be
an invitation.
That walking away
isn’t forgetting
where I came from.
I’m trying
to become
the first woman
who mistakes leaving
for an heirloom.
*
Heather Kays is a St. Louis-based poet and author. Her memoir, Pieces of Us, dissects her mother’s struggles with alcoholism and addiction. Her YA novel, Lila’s Letters, traces a young woman’s growth and healing through unsent letters. Her poetry collection, Myths in the Feed, sold out six times in three months, making her Crying Heart Press’s best-selling author. She was nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize in 2025.
Heather runs The Alchemists, an online writing community, and is drawn to stories that explore survival, identity, and the complexity of being human.
Her work has recently appeared in ONE ART, Cosmic Daffodil Journal, Chiron Review, The Literary Underground, The Rye Whiskey Review, SHINE Poetry Series, and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency.