The babies made me invincible.
Even as they slept, they protected me.
Even as they slept, I could stomach the dark.
I could walk up the stairs, lights out,
and pass the mirror without hurrying.
I was divine, hovering inches above the floor
in a cloud sweet as milk—no rose perfume
like Therese. I glowed with love but also
with suffering. Even the suffering
Even as they slept, they protected me.
Even as they slept, I could stomach the dark.
I could walk up the stairs, lights out,
and pass the mirror without hurrying.
I was divine, hovering inches above the floor
in a cloud sweet as milk—no rose perfume
like Therese. I glowed with love but also
with suffering. Even the suffering
I wore like a blue robe, beautiful enough
for a painting. I felt the sky guarding me.
When I wore the babies and under
the babies the blue robe of my suffering,
I was lit from within. I burned myself
for fuel, shoveling black stones into
the stove inside me. The milk boiled
and grew skin. It turned. Still I felt nothing
could harm me—nothing would dare.
I was essential. I was too needed
in the world. That feeling was a spell
that is only now beginning to break.
Photo “Butterfly shadow” by vasse nicolas,antoine; licensed under CC BY 2.0
Maggie Smith is the author of Weep Up (Tupelo Press, forthcoming 2018)The Well Speaks of Its Own Poison (Tupelo Press 2015), winner of the Dorset Prize and the 2016 Independent Publisher Book Awards Gold Medal in Poetry; Lamp of the Body (Red Hen 2005), winner of the Benjamin Saltman Award; and three prizewinning chapbooks. Her poems have appeared in The Paris Review, The Southern Review, Magma, Waxwing, Virginia Quarterly Review, Guernica,, and many other journals. The recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ohio Arts Council, and the Sustainable Arts Foundation, Smith is a freelance writer and editor, and she serves as a consulting editor to the Kenyon Review.
Latest posts by Maggie Smith (see all)
- Invincible - July 17, 2016
- THE KING DIED AND THEN THE QUEEN DIED - February 14, 2016