Lynne Schmidt

Playtime

Today I watched my dog crumple like a piece of paper,

watched her forget her age,

rear like a lion, and her back legs

fold like a letter in an envelope.

When the puppy went after her again,

slamming into my old girl’s front paws,

which then buckled with the soft grace of age,

and her body, an elderly accordion,

slowly hum to the ground.

And my old girl with her milky eyes,

lay there, startled to suddenly be on the grass,

tail wagging as if it was all part of the play,

as if aging is just a game.

Bio

Lynne Schmidt is the granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor, and mental health professional with a focus in trauma and healing. She is the winner of the 2020 New Women's Voices Contest and author of the chapbooks, Dead Dog Poems (forthcoming from Finishing Line Press), Gravity (Nightingale and Sparrow Press) which was listed as one of the 17 Best Breakup Books to Read in 2020, and On Becoming a Role Model (Thirty West), which was featured on The Wardrobe's Best Dressed for PTSD Awareness Week. Her work has received the Maine Nonfiction Award, Editor's Choice Award, and was a 2018 and 2019 PNWA finalist for memoir and poetry respectively. Lynne was a five-time 2019 and 2020 Best of the Net Nominee, and an honorable mention for the Charles Bukowski and Doug Draime Poetry Awards. 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.