The Anneslee Poems: Inheritance

There’s something vile

in me,

like rotten fish carcasses

baking in the hot July sun.

I can’t scrub it off

or cut it out.

Even burning it

leaves the smell behind.

It’s a part of me –

this stench.

It’s a part of the bone and sinew –

the flesh –

I cannot escape.

It’s you.