how many deaths is enough?
i always rise from the ashes,
but maybe i am tired of
all the funerals
of every version of me
i couldn’t keep;
see glimpses of them in
my memories—
feel like a mirror whose
glass needs shattered
in order to feel
whole again,
this new glass just doesn’t
reveal things i want to see;
i am tired of all the anger and all
the pain and the sadness
just want to scoop it out of me like
pumpkin guts from a jack-o-lantern—
the exhausting thing of being
a phoenix is not my capacity to
endure,
but simply being expected to;
how many deaths is enough?
i want to be as happy
as my mother wants me to be.
© Linda M. Crate
Bio: Linda M. Crate (she/her) is a Pennsylvanian writer whose poetry, short stories, articles, and reviews have been published in a myriad of magazines both online and in print. She has eighteen published chapbooks the latest being: crescent moon (Fae Corps Publishing, July 2026).
