By Christian Paulisich
My grandmother, a traveler before
she lost her memory, kept
a set of Russian nesting dolls
in the China cabinet.
I tinkered with the toy
I knew boys were not supposed to touch.
I would twist and pull
each layer loose,
noting what was lost
as the dolls grew
smaller: the scarlet-painted collar,
an eyelash, violets warped
at the woman’s waist,
slight crescent between the lips. I watched
the vanishings
become more apparent the closer
I looked, the longer I stared
at what I no longer recognized.
Christian Paulisich received his B.A. from the Johns Hopkins University and is a Master’s candidate at Towson University. He lives in Baltimore, Maryland, but is originally from the Bay Area, California. He is a Pushcart Prize nominee whose work has been published in or is forthcoming from Literary Matters, Denver Quarterly, Atlanta Review, Doubly Mad, Blue Marble Review, Pangyrus, and others. He is a poetry reader for The Hopkins Review.