A Week After She Left Us My Therapist Told Me

                                                by Roseanne Freed


You no longer need to hold back your emotions.
You have full permission to feel your feelings.
It’s healthy and important.

I can’t.
If I allow myself to weep 
I hear her—

            Stop making it about you.


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Roseanne Freed grew up in apartheid South Africa and now lives with her husband in California, where she takes inner-city school children hiking in the Santa Monica mountains. A Best of the Net and Pushcart nominee, her poems have appeared in Blue Heron Review, MacQueens Quinterly, ONE ART, Naugatuck River Review, and Writing in a Woman’s Voice among others.