LITTLE GIRLS, 1993

The night I went to the play
and you waited on our steps,
I imagined you a little girl,
Somewhere in the fifties
on your steps on Spruce,
playing. It hurt me to see
you so innocent sometimes, and
here I was in the wilderness
of my own past, called out
of the wedding oath to slay
my dragon. My heart was broke,
broke and broken and overfilled
with itself. I cannot
make you see how one day
I awoke and had to follow
this need to break away.
I was in a cab coming home
late to the house you hated,
this brick assemblage built
seventy years ago. You hate it,
and I have since given it to you,
as it is the last material thing
I can give. I can't blame you.
I can only blame me for not striking
out against the way people come
to love me, despite my need to be
in the lonely room in East Baltimore
where I grew up. In a full house,
alone. I have to go back there
and find the talisman that has
made me a prisoner of love,
against the wishes of my dreams
at night, all gone in the bones.

Copyright © 1998 Michael S. Weaver. All rights reserved.