My Partner Tells Me He Considers His Guns Every Time He Votes

When I come home from DC
a fire erupts in the deepest caverns of me that this time
won’t die out.
I tell him, Politics will be the reason we break up,
and he says, Maybe.

Over the next few days
I drink enough beer to clean my insides out,
to numb what the nation is doing to its daughters
its victims, its survivors.

When we first started dating, my partner told me
he voted in such a way to keep his guns safe
while my nieces’ bodies are on the political floor
before they’ve even had time to bleed.

I want to tear his eyes out with my fingernails
I want to scream into his throat
and have it come out as justice.

When I started a new job,
the lead teacher pulled me to the side, placed
a green binder in my hands and whispered
When you get the chance, read this.

The manual offered suggestions for what to do
in a live shooting situation.
The manual told me to abandon the children in front of me
and whatever happens
Get out at all costs.

We’re taught not to play dead anymore,
we are taught to run silently so they can’t hear,
swallow the panic like water,
and if that doesn’t work offer our bodies in gun powder sacrifice
in the hopes that our exchange offers
a few minutes to save someone else.

I want my partner to understand
that a gun is an inanimate object
and that I
am right in front of him
breathing fire.

---

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 and 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.