Friday, October 23, 2026: Linda M. Crate's "how many deaths is enough?"

 

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).