from Please Bury Me in This
Maybe my arms lifted as a woman lowers a dress over my head.
This is not what I want to tell you.
Looking at red flowers on her mother’s dress as she sat on her lap on a train is Woolf’s first memory.
Then the sound of waves behind a yellow shade, of being alive as ecstasy.
Maybe her mind, as I read, lowering over my mind.
Maybe looking down, as I sit on the floor, at the book inside the diamond of my legs.
Even briefly, to love with someone else’s mind.
Moving my lips as I read the waves breaking, one, two, one, two, and sending a splash of water over the beach.
What I want to tell you is ecstasy.
Copyright © 2013 by Allison Benis White. Used with permission of the author. This poem appeared in Poem-a-Day on July 12, 2013.
"In a class in graduate school, my professor said that he didn’t really see other people until he started reading—this resonated with me, and by extension, I thought, I didn’t really see myself until I started writing. This poem, which is from a book-length series called “Please Bury Me in This,” originated from reading Virginia Woolf’s Reminiscences."
—Allison Benis White
Allison Benis White
