If I,—
when you are
sleeping
and the landlady downstairs
her ashy dog
are sleeping
and the train that brought me home
is a wolf-black breath
breathing back
into coarse marshlands
along the coast,—
if I in our dining room
dressless
dance, wheezily
singing so not even
our infestation of moths
can hear: I will never be daughter
of the maple tree! I will never be
sister of the leaf!
If I admire
my hairless shins
and the purple gloss
of my polished fingernails running
over them in the light
cast by the street’s mechanical
moon,—who shall say I am not
the woman
who says with her mouth
at your neck:
Love, when I told you
my wilderness was almost
wild, it meant
I hadn’t loved a man
like a man yet.
from O’NightsFind more by Cecily Parks at the library
Copyright © 2015 Cecily Parks
Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Alice James Books.