the girl inside

Some days I feel more divorced than others. Some days I feel so much like a mother first and a sexy woman last that it takes everything I have in me not to succumb to a self-indulgent crawl beneath my sheets and disappear forever. And on days like that, I do two things: I welcome my warrior poses, and I pull out the poetry. This one by Lucille Clifton is rather fitting.


There is a girl inside

There is a girl inside.
She is randy as a wolf.
She will not walk away and leave these bones
to an old woman.

She is a green tree in a forest of kindling.
She is a green girl in a used poet.

She has waited patient as a nun
for the second coming,
when she can break through gray hairs
into blossom

and her lovers will harvest
honey and thyme
and the woods will be wild
with the damn wonder of it.

-Lucille Clifton