My Aunt Tells Me I’m Not Getting Any Younger
BY FEATURED WRITER: LYNNE SCHMIDT
Lynne Schmidt, Bullet Case, photograph, 2021. Courtesy of the artist.
My Aunt Tells Me
I’m Not Getting Any Younger
LYNNE SCHMIDT | APR 2022 | ISSUE 15
says I should settle down, says
what about that boy I met that one time
but not the one you took to the funeral.
She worries that I will die alone,
and I tell her I worry
if I settle for something other than
exactly what I want,
I will die unhappy.
She huffs and smokes a cigarette
because I am a lost cause.
I read once that after a shot in the lungs
a deer can run up to sixty-five yards
before walking until it collapses.
I once dated a boy
who kept the bullet case that killed the deer
on the tip of the antlers
he cut from its head and
hung on the wall.
Lynne Schmidt is the grandchild of a Holocaust survivor, and a mental health professional with a focus in trauma and healing. They are the winner of the 2021 The Poetry Question Chapbook Award for their chapbook, Sexytime, and the 2020 New Women's Voices Contest for their chapbook, Dead Dog Poems. Other chapbooks include Gravity (Nightingale and Sparrow Press) which was listed as one of the 100 Best Breakup Books of All Time by Book Authority, and On Becoming a Role Model (Thirty West), which was featured on The Wardrobe's Best Dressed for PTSD Awareness Week. In 2012, they 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.