CONTENT NOTE: This piece discusses and references nightmares, body-related fears, roadkill, gore, and death.
Michaela Godding | Issue 11, Summer 2026
trans·fix
/tran(t)sˈfiks/
verb
1. cause (someone) to become motionless with horror, wonder, or astonishment.
I haven’t gone to the dentist in five years
but still have nightmares about losing all my teeth.
What most call self-sabotage I call an adrenaline rush.
What says I’m alive more than lying
on my back in the middle of the road?
If not the semi missing me by inches,
then the way my body rears into fawn
as it booms around the corner.
2. pierce with a sharp implement or weapon.
Around the corner of every rural shadow
are the purpling remains of a too slow deer.
We drive past the tragedy like a nuisance.
What nature calls natural I call a cavity.
What says I’m not alive more than it lying
on its back in the middle of the road?
I still have nightmares of dying in a car crash.
I still drive to work hopeful, both hands on the wheel.
Michaela Godding
Michaela Godding (she/her) is a loud and proud queer Poetry MFA candidate at George Mason University with a deep interest in writing about and through trauma. She has released chapbook dwelling (Bottlecap Press), and full collection The Year Our Grandmothers Died (AOS Publishing). More of her words can be found in or are forthcoming from Rabble Review, Azarão Lit Journal, Chill Mag, Echo Review, Ritual Dagger Zine, Same Faces Collective, The Nutmeg Anthology (Grayson Books), and on Poetry Daily, where she currently works as an editorial assistant.
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