I feel your watching while I wash�
gratitude, admiration�or regret?
First the glasses, whose fragile lips I trace
with a lover's hands: glass too thin
at the rims, bottoms too round not to slip
my soapy grasp, though I keep thinking
I'll invent a better grip. Do I press too hard�
or is the glass too frail?
I can not hold it gently enough.
Under my strength I see it breaking
like before, opening, and re-opening
the white crescent moon of my early injury.
Just seven stitches in a body's life
of injuries, but I remember every time
I ease my hand into the soapy glass,
grateful, for each reprieve.
It's not the severity, but the nature
of the injury, skin so thin there, bone
so near�the idea, that I do this to myself.
How shall I seek to embrace my weakness,
now I know everything I will ever believe
about strength, or love, is wrong?
�1999 by April Ossmann
First published in Puerto del Sol
