Out by the Shed Published in Impspired Literary Magazine poetry
Out by the shed I burn a year and half of mandatory chemically induced menopause. I'm a bonfire of release crackling with a decade of abundant off label overprescribing of
fentanyl patches and each new pain on the market. My hair is covered in pieces of my Defiance and Non-Compliance when I had the nerve to tell you that getting pregnant again was no cure for stage 4 Endo, for someone heavily
medicated and in pain and with two small kids. The ashes of your fire of authority are sucked straight up into the moon a swirling snowstorm of involuntary therapies. You used to line up the objects
on your desk over and over thinking you were the source of the light and heat and order but now I don't need to stand by the flames of your misguided treatments and your habits of disbelief. I stomp on the parts of you still moving
then I cremate you and you drift over West Woods your ashes silhouetted against Sirius and the rings of Saturn singing. I hid things in the dark and yielded to excruciating pain out of deep love
and self-imposed expectations that because I could tolerate anything I should. The blaze of you coats my mouth. You diagnosed me into pieces that took forever to collect. Now, I'm a Firestarter.