Danielle Oviatt

In Memory

With slim finger fold the crane out of gold paper,
set it on the water,
leave before morning.
Commentary: I got the idea from a statue on campus at the University of Utah. It portrays a Japanese girl who contracted leukemia from being exposes to the Hiroshima bomb. Someone told her that if she made a certain number of cranes out of gold paper, she would be cured. I was touched by that, then one day I noticed that someone had folded a lot of paper cranes and left them at the base of the statue. This image continued to stick with me. As you can see the poem isn't really about that anymore, this evolution from one image to another never ceases to amaze me when I'm lucky enough to experience it, which is why I hesitate to speculate on why a writer makes a choice in his work.


Hurt
(working title)

You hear me crying in the bathtub
and ask why.

I cry too much too easily
and oddly that makes me cry too.

I know you don't know
what to do with me when I'm like this.
I want sympathy, but I need to be alone to punish myself
The truth is, I just hurt, I guess.

I know that makes you hurt too,
which makes me cry.
I try to tell you no one did this to me,
but I guess we only hear what we want to
and believe even less.

Now both of us are upset.

Later, while you sleep, I will worry about what all this crying meant,
and wish I could seal my eyes against tears
as I rub the leftover grit from them.

I will nearly start crying again,
but will turn into the pillow
and berate myself.
Commentary: Personal experience again. It was written during a rather weepy period and is addressed to someone I care about.
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