Poetry by Lynne Schmidt

            Lenny DiFranza CC



​Dante Was Wrong
 
In Dante’s Divine Comedy,
he proposed there are nine circles of hell
and claims to have walked through each.
 
He forgot to mention 
         the circle of hell reserved for watching your favorite aunt lose her memory,
         the circle when the person you love marries someone else,
         the circle reserved for not making it in time for a visit before your friend dies,
         the circle where you wait on a hospital floor for a diagnosis
         and how you sink into another when you’re given the word, “terminal.”
 
The circle of hell reserved for the phone ringing, and ringing,
and your sister telling you their heart stopped working, they didn’t survive the accident,
 
or the level of hell reserved for when you break the news to your sister
and listen to her shatter on the other line.
 
No one addresses that spaces in hell for the aftermath of grief
the way your bones continue to operate but your chest hollows out.
 
So how many circles of hell
are there really? 





If you let me,

I would spend every second of every day
telling you I love you.
 
If you let me,
I would rearrange the solar system,
so the moon can’t affect your tides.
 
If you let me,
I would make your hands into velvet,
not so that they touch me softer,
but so they’re gentler to you.
 
If you let me,
I would kiss away your scabs so often
the skin won’t ever scar.
 
If you let me,
I would brighten the darkest day,
and if you were too far gone,
join you in the dark.
 
If you let me,
I would lay on the bathroom floor with you,
while the shower runs,
until my voice is the only thing you hear.
 
If you let me, 
I would help erase the memory 
of everyone whose hands have hurt you,
until every touch was new. 
 
If you let me,
I would love you. 

Lynne Schmidt is a mental health professional and an award winning poet and memoir author who also writes young adult fiction. She is the author of the chapbooks, Gravity (Nightingale and Sparrow Press), and On Becoming a Role Model (Thirty West). Her work has received the Maine Nonfiction Award, Editor's Choice Award, and was a 2018 and 2019 PNWA finalist for memoir and poetry respectively. Lynne is a five time 2019 Best of the Net Nominee, and an honorable mention for the Charles Bukowski Poetry Award. In 2012 she started the project, AbortionChat, which aims to lessen the stigma around abortion. When given the choice, Lynne prefers the company of her three dogs and one cat to humans. 

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