Poetry: Naked in the Therapists Office by Lacie Semenovich

Naked in the Therapist’s Office

My grief pulls the shades

on midnight. Stitches herself

into the bedsheets.

 

My grief turns up at parties wearing

china patterns and telling stories

that bore the gossips.

 

My grief does not sleep. Keeps the dog

up at night sniffing at the doorways.

The dog knows better than my husband

that something is wrong.

 

My grief waltzes as though no one

watches because no one really sees.

 

My grief keeps to herself. Everyone

is wandering their own forests, lost,

seeking, preoccupied. She becomes

translucent in the sunlight.

 

My grief burns tires to get attention

but no one notices. She thinks

herself lovely. My grief tells stories

of alternate timelines. She doesn’t

schedule appointments. She conjures

herself in misplaced thoughts, glimpses

of red, losing lottery tickets.

 

My grief gets naked

in the therapist’s office, covering

her intimate parts with playing cards.

 

My grief metamorphoses from one face

to another. Sips tea with the dead. Burns

letters written in Sanskrit.

Lacie Semenovich is a poet and fiction writer living in Cleveland, Ohio. Her work has appeared in B O D Y, Sheila-Na-Gig online, Qwerty, Chiron Review, and The Best Small Fictions 2020.  She is the author of a chapbook, Legacies (as Lacie Clark, Finishing Line Press 2012).