How do you feel? – Knee Brace Press

My counselor asks;
my reply pours out of my chest,
along with a waterfall of tears,
in a very cartoonish stream.
Irony feels like a wise option,
but sometimes I can’t hold on to it –
just as I can’t grab onto my words.
I become the unwilling vessel –
of angry letters and sounds;
they fill the journey of the murky hours.
My bedroom grows small,
my breath abandons my body,
even as I desperately try to swallow –
my scream, my thoughts, my memories.
I ask my counselor, Is this the end of me?
She shakes her bright head,
This is how you cope,
This is how you survive.
So, I gather all my shattered pieces,
and I acknowledge my pain, my anger, my loss;
Along with the strength hidden within.

Contributor

Petra F. Bagnardi

Petra F. Bagnardi is a writer, a screenwriter, and a poet. She worked for the Italian TV network, RAI, and her poetry was published by various literary journals and magazines including, Masque & Spectacle Literary Journal, Punk Noir Magazine, Poetica Review, Drawn to the Light Press, Pennsylvania Literary Journal, Quail Bell Magazine, Ginosko Literary Journal, The Sunlight Press, Blydyn Square Review, and more. She was short-listed in the Enfield Poets’ 20th Anniversary Poetry Competition and won second place in the Wax Poetry and Art Magazine’s poetry contest. She is a bilingual author, English and Italian.