I Answer a Question Hand-Written in the Cover of a Used Book

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Cider Press Review, December 1, 2024

—What is really true about me and my worthiness to be loved?"

That anyone who asks
such questions and buries them
in books deserves spring
sunlight on her face

through the crack between
curtains her mother made, or maybe
a small black cat that follows her
into the bathroom, stares
at her shoulder when she sleeps.
That the deepest truth
about her is, at her core
there is a fire that began
to burn the moment she breathed
this terrible air, the truth
outside of her mother, that we
might accidentally lay down
our dreams on the altar of important

men, that we might be
haunted by the fingers of children
who died inside us, or by our living
child’s request we hide
his hunting rifle. I’d say
anyone made of light

like that deserves coffee brewing
before she wakes,
made by hands that know how
she likes it: dark enough to hold
the cream pushing it up to the edge
of the “Big Hug Mug,” that makes her laugh
each time she sees it on the counter
where right now she notices an orange

she cut earlier but forgot to eat
is making the room smell like summer
even though it’s frozen blue
outside. And this is the place
I would answer what
she didn’t ask—
I too am a fire
dressed as a woman and burning
through a forest of painful
questions. I would say

there’s no worthiness
a fire must wear.