No calendar warned me about this weather—

one minute my body was a small house,

windows flung open. The next,

a furnace clanking to life like a protest.

I wake at the witching hour,

heat rising in me like a sudden flock

of birds. No warning, just the wings

of it, a red rush under my skin.

I temper the anxiety with distraction,

phone glowing with threads

of also-awake Xennial women,

we flock to each other in uprising.

I know now hormone is a polite

word for riot. I’ve thrown open

the doors to the courthouse,

invited the haters to wander through.

I used to keep things in their place—

reason folded in snug squares,

fury shelved behind good dishes,

all my yes! polished and ready for company.

But now? Now the smallest thing—

a man explaining the pull of the moon,

a doctor saying maybe anti-depressants?

the tight elastic of polite silence—

and my body answers first.

No it says.

NO again, but louder this time,

with a hot flash bright as a nuclear

blast over dark water.

Somewhere inside me

a long-quiet animal stands on hind legs,

shakes off years of measured manners,

attunes to the forest instead of the clock.

Sleep is feral now.

My dreams pace the fence

between now and death, bite

at old rules slipping off my hips as I run.

Maybe the heat is a signal fire.

Maybe the wild, erratic pulse is a drum.

Maybe my body has decided

it will no longer be governed

by small rooms, unspoken

rules, male gazes, soft voices,

no longer shoved into the narrow

corridor of being only good.

Bio: Heidi Spitzig (she/they) is a poet, artist, and counselor living in the Finger Lakes region of NY with her partner and more cats than necessary. Her poems and photography have been published in Ink and Marrow, Humana Obscura, Anodyne, and others. She’s an avid nature-lover who can be found in the forest, reading poems to any tree that listens.