The Most Beautiful Woman in the World
You used to touch my cheek and tell me
I was the most beautiful woman in the world.
I wondered what was wrong with me,
that I never felt it in my bones.
This weekend, I holed up in a cabin to write,
Like a stenographer of grief,
I sat in a circle of tears
recording as each one weeped.
And said:
Free me from the shame of having failed to love you well.
Free me from the guilt of having tripped a hundred times
on my past.
Free me from imagining you as the reincarnation of my father
sent to see if I can keep my worthiness under your gaze.
We give it all back.
We return to you the words which were not uttered from love,
the expectations of unwavering desire.
We return to you the anguished drumbeat of abandonment,
neither born nor bred with us.
We return the burden you tried to hand over
when you said it was all our fault.
We wrote and heaved, my tears and I,
Until there were none of them left, until my face was dry.
Then I caught my image in a mirrored wall:
Strikingly sad brown eyes, and round welcoming cheeks,
Lips that begged, Come, rest on me.
I met her then, finally, the woman you always saw—
She was the most beautiful in the
whole, wide world.
