playing god

Michaela Godding

(The average person forgets ninety percent of their dreams. I have started keeping tallies on a notepad next to my bed to keep track of all the forgetting. I wonder if endings are all we can rely on. I wonder and wonder and remember that eighty percent of the human body’s heat comes out from the head and I wonder if wondering will burn me to pieces.)

They say that life is easier when you are younger, that you can breathe and swallow at the same time until you are seven months old, that as a four-year-old you ask approximately four hundred and fifty questions a day. They say that what you can’t control you should put in god’s hands. My hands have twenty-seven bones, twenty-nine joints and at least one hundred and twenty-three other named ligaments but I wonder. I wonder about the unnamed ones. I wonder about the fifty thousand cells that will die and be replaced in the body by the time you finish reading this sentence.

More from Michaela Godding ↓

• @michaelagodding on Instagram
• Her book, the year our grandmothers died, from AOS Publishing will be released February 2026.
• Her chapbook, Dwelling, is out now from Bottlecap Press.
• You can listen to me read Michaela Godding’s, Poem For a Mother Six Years Out of Prison, over on Instagram @rembrandts.cure

Mentioned in this episode:

Write After with One Poem Only

Write After is a way to encourage poets to listen and write, and use National Poetry Month to highlight how listening to poetry makes us better poets. I know I write the best when I’m surrounded by beautiful poetry–it’s part of the reason I created this podcast, and I want to encourage others to share this practice. If you want to join: Listen to a poem from the month of April on One Poem Only, then write your own in response. I will pick one for each day to read in June for a special series: One Poem After 🍎🍏 Submissions close May 15.

Write After Submissions Form