A Peek Inside 75 Years: A Woman's Life in Verse

My debut is a story told in poems with each poem highlighting a year in a fictional woman named Ana's life. Below is a sample from the book, poem Thirty-Three, which is when Ana is thirty-three years old.

Thirty-Three

Crawling out of the monstrous mouth that has eaten me
doesn’t leave me less digested.

Parts are missing—like that middle finger I used to wag at
danger—and my legs are too weak to stand
without Joshua supporting me.

It quickly feels like trading one blade for another,
except one is dull and one is sharp.

Yet the days become months and the months become longer
until someone cuts me off on I-90,

and I hold my arm out the window,
realizing my middle finger’s grown back
while my soul was healing.