when you’re afraid to live and afraid to die every day is a conundrum to be or not to be the question calcifies your soul living involves risk failure heartache pain fear sits in your stomach like a rock as you grind your teeth and bite your nails not living slaps you in the face with a great blank wall beyond which is heaven or hell or nothing at all so you tiptoe through the day as best you can while the rock shifts gnawing your innards with every step at night the rock rises to your throat as you fight sleep because who knows if you’ll see another sunrise it’s no way to be and yet you don’t want not to be caught in a halfworld of shadows you’re the walking dead a cardboard corpse going through the motions
RC deWinter’s poetry is widely anthologized, notably in New York City Haiku (NY Times, 2/2017), Now We Heal: An Anthology of Hope (Wellworth Publishing, 12/2020) in print: 2River, Event, Gargoyle Magazine, the minnesota review, Night Picnic Journal, Plainsongs, Prairie Schooner, Southword, The Ogham Stone, Twelve Mile Review, York Literary Review among many others and appears in numerous online literary journals. She is also one of the winners of the 2021 Connecticut Shakespeare Festival Sonnet Contest, anthology publication.