To my colleague who fat-shames me like
it’s her mission from God, I leave
fifty stubborn pounds

that she cannot shed,
no matter how early she rises for an
invigorating

swim. To my first therapist,
I leave after fifty minutes.
I leave $120 plus

interest accumulated when one of us
disappears. To my cat, I leave the eyes
she’s tried to eat from my head

each morning for 
seven years. Bon appétit,
beloved weirdo.

To every man who said to me, “You’re actually
right,” I leave the imprint of my size
nine boot on your flat ass.

To the deer in the woods half a block away,
144 maple saplings and  
twelve salt licks.

To my high school boyfriend who told stories
only he and I believed, I leave
two clean shots of Stoli and a plot twist.

To my bestie who always packed
a suitcase and met me at the airport, I leave
a crate of oranges and my sharpest

paring knife, two blueberry bushes,
a Saskatoon pie from my freezer.
To my mother, every

pink dress I would not wear.
To my father, the promise I made
to keep my mother

as safe as
I could. To you who are reading my
living will and testament

to living well, or between
two extremes, I leave this line.
No, this one. 

Tanis MacDonald’s next poetry book, Mobile, comes out with Book*hug in September 2019. She is the author of six books of poetry and essays, including Out of Line: Daring to Be an Artist Outside the Big City (Wolsak and Wynn 2018), and is co-editor, with Rosanna Deerchild and Ariel Gordon, of the anthology GUSH: menstrual manifestos for our times (Frontenac House 2018). Recent work has appeared in The New Quarterly, FreeFall, Prairie Fire and Contemporary Verse 2, and in the anthology Against Death (Anvil Press 2019). She lives in Waterloo, Ontario.

Image by Kai Dahms @dilucidus