by Jenica Lodde

I harbored the spirit of unforgiveness/she wasn’t the unruly houseguest
everyone supposes/she didn’t destroy furniture
or have people over for orgies/mostly she sat silently
at my table and sipped tea/one arched eyebrow
her signal to never walk back/when I faltered
and my body got weak she was there/the tips of her fingers
warming the base of my spine/she didn’t linger past her welcome
the way some people tell it/she slipped out the back door like a vapor
when I opened the door to my own strength.
 
 
 

Jenica Lodde is a poet whose work has appeared in IO, Swimm, Word Fountain, Remington Review, Occulum, and Vox Poetica. She is currently working on a verse memoir about her hippie upbringing. When Jenica is not writing, she enjoys taking depression naps, drinking coffee, reading verse novels, and trying to get her kids to peel their eyes off of their iPads. She lives in Scranton, Pennsylvania where the sky is always gray and the trees are always changing colors.