Two Poems by Hannah Grieco

It was not this

I write essays in psychiatric waiting rooms

I type and wait, I

rent these office spaces

while other parents stare at their phones

statue still.

 

Three kids is a lot of kids

my mother once told me, she

didn’t know their

breaths would be so labored

their hearts deep spaces hiding.

 

I once dreamed of a literary stage

but it was not a light-sleep anxiety tremble, it

was not this

this

this.

***

When You Leave Me

My secretly exquisite daughter,
Quietly sketching your story in page after page
Of disobedient, bold narration.

I miss you, simply that
A tiny tyrant flown.


Hannah Grieco is an advocate and writer in Arlington, VA. She can be found online at www.hgrieco.com, on Twitter at @writesloud, at Longleaf Review as a nonfiction reader, and at Barrelhouse Magazine as an assistant fiction editor.

We are able to publish these poems thanks to supporters of the Malarkey Books Writers Fund.