Lynne Schmidt: 3 poems (On Becoming a Role Model excerpt)
Escape Routes
I dreamed of escape routes,
of emergency exits
and fiery deaths,
so that maybe someday
I wouldn’t have to come back to this place.
I wished on the first stars that came out at night:
star light, star bright,
anything I see tonight,
I wish I may, wish I might,
disappear before he shows up for visitation tonight.
But he would come
and we would pile into a truck,
arguing about who got to sit in back
because it was the furthest seat away.
Our kisses would be stolen,
souls leaving our chests a little more each time,
teaching three young girls that their bodies.
are not theirs,
and that when a man demands to be hugged,
to be kissed,
you comply or you get hurt.
Forced words of affirmation fell from our lips:
I love you,
I miss you,
Please stop wrapping your arms around me
because it feels like granite, sandpaper, and I can't breathe.
We would tick by hours,
the safest ones when you were at the bar,
but then the truck would pull in
and we couldn't run far.
And so I learned,
far younger than I should have,
that wishes on stars fall flat,
because even after we finally escaped,
the nightmares return and take their place.
All My Missing Teeth
I live in a seat of chronic disappointment
so that, if you do a fraction of a margin
better than I do,
I can slice apart my skin
as blood trickles out in sacrifice
and punishment
asking
why couldn’t I do so well?
As various therapists take my brain apart,
a verbal lobotomy,
attempting to transcribe the story of my life,
I’ll spend some time examining my failures under a microscope
in the hopes of enduring enough radiation,
enough chemotherapy,
so my body can kill this cancer.
And just as I think I am holding hands
with the best that I can do,
my aunt will ask me
why I’m not as good as my sister.
And so I stop holding hands
and hold guns and knives
and beer bottles instead.
I bite down on cement
because if I can swallow and digest,
if my teeth crack,
it is something I can do
that no one else can.
Six years later,
my therapist will sit in her chair
and challenge me about self-worth.
As my body recoils,
she’ll ask,
“What would it take for you to value yourself?”
And I’ll smile
with all my missing teeth.
On Becoming a Role Model
There was a day in the history of the world
when my niece stole my glasses,
stole my winter hat,
and put them on.
With a smile that could swallow oceans
she said,
“Look, Auntie, I’m you!”
And I remembered my mother’s words
when I told her I wanted to grow up
and be
just
like
her.
“Don’t ever turn out like me,” she’d hissed,
Words a slap in the face to a small child.
I didn’t understand then.
I understand now.
I am not my mother,
and my niece is not me.
Instead, I pulled her into my arms.
I cannot point to that day on the calendar,
because at the time I didn’t realize it was important.
Scholars will not write about the great battle
that took place within her words
because they won’t care about it.
But on that day
in the history of the world
I decided
that I would become someone
that my niece could look up to.
Lynne Schmidt is the author of Gravity (Nightingale and Sparrow, 2019) and a mental health activist who resides in Maine. She writes memoir, poetry, and young adult fiction. Her work has received the Maine Nonfiction Award, Editor's Choice Award, was a 2018 and 2019 PNWA finalist for memoir and poetry respectively, and a five-time 2019 Best of the Net Nominee. In 2012, she started the project, AbortionChat, which aims to lessen the stigma surrounding abortion and mental health. When given the choice, Lynne prefers the company of her three dogs and one cat to humans.
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ON BECOMIGN A ROLE MODEL, her latest chapbook, officially out on 4.24.20 from Thirty West Publishing