2025 Peter Sears Poetry Prize Runner-up

Aubrey Laine Baker “Snaggletooth”

I caught a nosebleed in the bonfire light

and by some synaptic snap I’m back

to your snaggletoothed smile.

Watercolor-rolling

to puddle in gray,

I reach, and it stays

like a pin-prick promise in a pin-drop splash—

the memory comes through in the smell

of campfire smoke and dry blood in a nostril.

I remember—I never used to get nosebleeds

until the night I told you you’d never be pretty

with teeth

like those

and your marshmallow-on-a-stick caught fire

and you dropped it in the sand—

the sugary fireball of a dream too sweet.

You turned to me with crooked canines

carrying the tears you tasted

when your mom said it too.

You punched my nose

and broke the bridge;

I put my hand on the pain

to feel what it was to drip with hurt.

It painted my fingers sticky and red, but

the lines in my unfolded palm kept clean

like canyons the acrylic sea could never touch,

and I wanted to scream

I love you.