Sometimes You Just Have to Grow Up
       

My OB says when I ask
about another little one to tend

this want bloom heart
stuck in a jar perfuming

the room with its flesh
stink until the whole family's sick,

all four of us. (Bounty already:
one girl, one boy

as prescribed.) I learn petals
fall off. Off and off onto

the counter tacky with spilled Os
milk and finger jam. The mad cat

meme says, Go embrace life
somewhere else which I quote

here as it pleases me
to do so. Seasons of one's life.

Season of indulgence. I indulge
my therapist with my accomplishments,

help myself to a tissue for each
until the box gapes back

in sudden emptiness. And yet,
Dr. Viv says, you're not happy.

Let's explore this. My mother
likes to tell a story called

All the Punishment You Needed
of the Cinderella birthday

I attended as a girl,
how I licked every last child's

cupcake clean of its beautiful
pink icing until nothing

was left and hid in the closet,
ill, filled with the sunrise

pinks, sunset pinks,
pinks of the inside of things,

the body inside
the beating body breathing

breathing
because because

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Copyright © 2022 Lauren Goodwin Slaughter All rights reserved
from Spectacle
Panhandler Books
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission