Hospice
by Julie Benesh
I want to die
a morphine fiend,
like my M-browed
tabby, Mandy. I’d shoot
her up; read her love
poems; sing lullabies.
She’d dance and chirp
her gratitude. No
Chemo--
(o, Mother!)
therapy.
Now I glimpse her
in every successive
cat, (as, I admit, my Major
Boyfriends sometimes blur
together in my synapses)
hoping you, love,
will likewise,
often, remember me.
About the Author
A graduate of Warren Wilson College’s Program for Writers, Julie Benesh is recipient of an Illinois Arts Council Grant and her writing can be found in Bestial Noise: A Tin House Fiction Reader, Tin House Magazine (print), Crab Orchard Review, Florida Review, Gulf Stream, Hobart, New World Writing, Cleaver, Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, and many other places. Read more at juliebenesh.com and reach her at juliebnsh@gmail.com.