Maybe the lady of death lives inside us. She's part of our muscles and bones. When we meet with the energy lady with pillows and sheets patterned in daffodils, she tries to push her out. We awe at the pain. We brace against the way she contorts us under pilled cotton, as if we might snap, as if some push will be our final. I can't help but moan. You never moan. Am I going to be covered in bruises tomorrow? we ask, wondering if to let her out there must be damage, the blue-black of ache, the start of a low ringing in the ears. I'm working with your fascia, she says—whoever they are. You're not interested in fascia, the sheet that sort of hid the corrugated metal ceiling, the '80s boom box, the bad painting of the angel man with a quiver—Eros, Fabio, or Icarus—whoever. We want the lady of bones inside us to crawl out, to take her teeth, eyeless sockets, frazzled hair, and go. I don't ever want to hear her high-pitched dirge inside me again. How do you feel? she asks after we've put back on our clothes. I want to say something about the skeletal hands that have loosened at our throat, the pressure of her against our hips, now gone. But we can't say that. That would be weird. So we ask about foods, stretching, energy, and gongs. You ask about a detox plan to flush her out.

Laura Madeline Wiseman is the author of Queen of the Platform (Anaphora Literary Press, 2013), Sprung (San Francisco Bay Press, 2012), the collaborative book Intimates and Fools (Les Femmes Folles Books, 2014) with artist Sally Deskins, and the chapbook Spindrift (Dancing Girl Press, 2014). She is the editor of Women Write Resistance: Poets Resist Gender Violence (Hyacinth Girl Press, 2013).