Pain engraves a deeper memory. - Anne Sexton

If someone burns out your eye
I will take your socket
and use it for an ashtray.

Many women are singing together of this:
one is in a shoe factory cursing the machine,
one is at the aquarium tending a seal,
one is dull at the wheel of her Ford,
one is at the toll gate collecting,
one is tying the cord of a calf in Arizona,
one is straddling a cello in Russia,
one is shifting pots on the stove in Egypt,
one is painting her bedroom walls moon color,
one is dying but remembering a breakfast,
one is stretching on her mat in Thailand,
one is wiping the ass of her child,
one is staring out the window of a train
in the middle of Wyoming and one is
anywhere and some are everywhere and all
seem to be singing, although some can not
sing a note.

Everyone in me is a bird.
I am beating my wings.
They wanted to cut you out
but they will not.
They said you were immeasurably empty
bu you are not.
They said you were sick unto dying
but they were wrong.
You are winging like a school girl.
You are not torn.