For years I chose the man to suit the instant,
from good guy to goat boy.
Not one could bridal me. In place of lace veil,
I peered from bandage gauze.
And if, in rage, some suitor tore that off, the red sun
was a scald, and I felt scalped
and rocket-shot onto the nearest flight. So everyone
I kissed left hurt. One man
broke the table I served him bread on.
Another claimed my heart
was arsenic at its core. When my last love came,
he slid a palm across
mine eyes, lent me his mouth (a bitten
plum), lay his head
in the middle of me, bent me
to that. Nights now,
my face rests on the meadow of his chest—
so I’m a loose-petalled poppy
blown open, a girl again, for the last time
hearing the earth’s heartbeat.
*this poem from writer, memoirist and academic Mary Karr, fell out of a book I reopened (and dusted) this past week, was first published in the New Yorker in 2005. It remains resonant, and oh so painfully familiar…I still remember the shocking authenticity of her first memoir, The Liars’ Club, which broke my heart. How is it a girl growing up in Texas can feel so familiar? Great writing does that.