The winter that kept my fever all season
was the winter I saw the neighbor girl’s body
being taken from the house.
And who would have trusted
me murmuring in my sleep?
Who could know I felt I was drowning?
Who knew the sea-fear, the airlessness?
And she was with me as a figment
in my fever-haze: she was the fever;
she was the ocean, the ocean
I felt moving inside me all winter,
the ocean into which they threw our bodies
because (they thought)
it was what we wanted.
from To See the QueenFind it in the library
Copyright © Persea Books 2013
Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, Inc.
on behalf of Persea Books.
