I TELL MY THERAPIST SOME DAYS IT’S AS SIMPLE AS GRIEF OVER MY MENOPAUSE BELLY

Let go, she says, be deliberate.
‘The hell, I say, this woman can’t know
what will unleash if I do,

what kind of bad weather 
I might throw, hurricane, tsunami, 
twelve feet of frigid damn rain 
and piss yellow snow.

Don’t get me started on that squat,
fat neighbor dog, mean as shit,
abused like the rest of us I’m guessing.

This is a safe space, she says 
and I am angry—never lived any other way,
couldn’t have, never once first picked, 
only picked over, picked upon,

my bottled fear the only thing 
holding my bones upright. 
In the winter, stink bugs 
are my only reliable friends.

Kari Gunter-Seymour is the Poet Laureate of Ohio. Her current poetry collections include Dirt Songs (EastOver Press 2024), winner of the StoryTrade Award and POTY Award; Alone in the House of My Heart (Ohio University Swallow Press, 2022), winner Best Book Award and Legacy Award. She is the executive director and editor of the Women of Appalachia Project’s Women Speak anthology series. Her work has been featured in a variety of journals and periodicals including World Literature Today, American Book Review, The New York Times and Poem-a-Day.