Poetry by Louisa Schnaithmann

     Christian Collins CC




Tell Me It Is June
​
 
and that I don’t want

to die anymore, that

the long grasses by

the marshy river will

welcome me again,

their thicknesses

waving in the warm

wind. Tell me I can
​
let go of hatred,

my softness coming

back to me, a blessing

that arrives quiet as

the night. Tell me

this isn’t about bravery,

that what I want and need

are both allowed.

Let me go out into the evening.

Let me see stars in the cool

blue-dark and smile.
​



Louisa Schnaithmann is an autistic poet and the author of Plague Love (Moonstone Press, 2021). Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Anti-Heroin Chic, SWWIM, The Summerset Review, and elsewhere. She is the consulting editor for ONE ART: a journal of poetry and lives in southeastern Pennsylvania.