Poetry by Heidi Spitzig

      Tim Vrtiska CC




Ausa Vatni

She wants to change her last name
when her daughter turns 18,
Having already gone through her Phoenix stage
she’s moved on to water, to where the ash of her past
thickens to mud and seeds get pressed under
by her bare feet. She doesn’t know
the garden she’s growing simply by walking,
feeling her body resting on her bones,
she takes back the pieces he stole,
wraps them around her,
feels something ancient 
crystalizing into awareness.

Above, 
      the moon,
             that sideways grin of night,
                    grants her the name
                           she had always 
                                known but could 
                                      never speak 
                                            out loud.

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To Feast on Fawn

Back then, we lived in a place
where peace relied on obedience
and love was exploited for compliance.
 
You smiled and said yes,
rewired your desire, plugged into
those parasitic procreating vampires.
 
Back then, you gulped down your opinions,
vomited explanations at the slightest
perception of supposed transgressions.
 
You became a little fawn, a doe-eyed
sycophantic daughter. The only advantage
to your servitude is that it kept us alive longer.
 
Whenever blame came to be named, 
you found me hiding in the brush,
doused me in gasoline, lit me up.
 
Back then, they kept us so poor and passive,
convinced me I was in love with being held captive.
But listen, little child. Terrified fawn. I got us out. 
 
I know your greatest fear is to be left behind, 
forgotten forever. But now I’ve eaten you up
like you’re medicine, my sweet little venison.
 
You live in my belly, my chewed up savior,
once swallowed down to hold their favor, 
now the hand in my gut guiding my intuitive nature.

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Heidi Spitzig is a poet, photographer, and crisis counselor living in the Finger Lakes region of New York with her partner and more cats than necessary. Heidi has taught workshops on healing using various creative outlets and holds a Master’s in Transpersonal Psychology. 

Her poems and photography have been published in several literary magazines. She’s an avid nature-lover who can be found in the forest, reading poems to any tree that will listen.
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