Liz, I think her name was, the woman
my mother brought me to. We played
cards in her perfumed office: lavender,
tulips, bowl of wax fruit. I was ten
and wanted to die. I don’t know why
I’m here again. I lived. Obviously,
I lived. When I was older, but still
a child, not innocent, but foolish,
I looked up from my solitary
suffering. I learned the history
of men. I pointed to a spot
on the map they rendered. I said
then, then, built my common life
in a room at the end.
If it’s true, what they say, that poetry
is written with the knowledge of
and against death, that it is
a beacon, a bulwark, then Love,
I confess, I have been no poet.
Outside, a hawk circles overhead.
Four cops circle a woman
dressed all in red. I circle
the apartment as you sleep, happily
in the next room. Just this once
I want so desperately
to be proven wrong.
Copyright © 2023 by Carmen Awkward-Rich. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on May 9, 2023, by the Academy of American Poets.