Poetry by Kathryn Shinko

      Taber Andrew Bain CC



Pain is a Baby


Pain is a baby
We all pass around.
An unnatural baby we take turns
Holding and nursing.

Tonight is my shift.
I entertain it with shitty TV and too many saltines
As it latches my breast in the lonely moonlight.

I resent its skin, even, and that it gets bigger
Every time it lands in my arms for another round,
Hurtled out of the mouth of my father or
Slipping beneath my sister's front door

Like a leak or an illness,
Defying containment.

It's bound on the couch with me to
Ache away the night
Till the stupor of sleeplessness submerges me in the shower-water of day I'm slowly ruining.
I can't sleep when it's on me. It's an inconvenience,
Stinking like the burned-out bones of the person
Holding it before me.
Traveling urchin.
Breast-nipper.
Gargantuan sucker,

Eating my agony like
​A creamed dessert.​



Kathryn Shinko is a Cleveland-based poet whose poetry is a respite from her lifelong struggles with depression. She works in magnetic resonance imaging by day and writes poems/draws pictures by night. Her favorite things include dogs, cottage cheese, and the summer.