
1 minute read
THE MONSTER
Were you there in my childhood behind my twisted hair, bitten fingernails, and bleeding cuticles?
Were you there in the anorexia nervosa when I was a college freshman, afraid to gain that 15? Were you lurking in the cafeteria line as I ate less and less until my skirts hung from my shrunken hips like empty gunny sacks?
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Did you smirk when I visited Aunt Gwen at Mendota Mental Hospital?
She, that once elegant lady, then housedress clad with grey hair awry.
Were you there in the lettuce sandwiches I fed on when I was pregnant— fearful I’d never lose the extra pounds once my child was born?
Were you hovering in the hives that covered my skin like symbols of sadness after my husband died?
You bastard! Did you wait to pounce until I was older, weaker? Do you think that you’re a winner, shaking the pillboxes like castanets, beckoning me to get on board the Xanax train, to float on the Cymbalta barge, to fly on the Zoloft jet?
I’ll give you your due. You’re scarier than Jason or The Headless Horseman. You’re more frightening than the music from “Psycho” or “Jaws.”
If I knew where you hang out during off hours, I’d get a gun and hunt you down.
Words
Words fall onto me like rain when I see you apparent enough to see and feel but never fast enough to grasp leaving me drenched in what I wish I said
HANNAH SWANSON Poetry