Monotheism It takes three years to forget her. The first, I circle
seven times to cast out the devil. Crush it, glass beneath my heel. Lift the veil. Say,
this was not the bride I wanted. Until I sound like I mean it, canopied and alone.
The second, I leave behind. Burning, disastrous, a trail of salt
from my own pillar. What I turned when I turned back.
The third, I arrive at the doorstep of her memory, smear it
in blood. Somewhere, I call another woman
by her name, on purpose.
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Leah Horlick is a writer and poet from Saskatoon, SK. A 2012 Lambda Literary Fellow in Poetry, her writing has appeared in So To Speak, Canadian Dimension, GRAIN,Poetry is Dead, Plenitude, Adrienne, and on Autostraddle. Her first collection of poetry, Riot Lung (Thistledown Press, 2012) was shortlisted for a 2013 ReLit Award and a Saskatchewan Book Award. She currently lives on Unceded Coast Salish Territories in Vancouver, where she co-curates REVERB, a queer and anti-oppressive reading series. Her next collection is forthcoming from Caitlin Press in 2015.