Suss: another literary journal

Storm Lesson

by Cassie Premo Steele

I try to tell you how the shack has blown over in the wind,
how I found it when I was wan­der­ing with no lan­guage
and how I tried to get in but there was no door,
just as there is no door to you now.

There are some peo­ple who are no more than an ear
turned in on itself, and I’ve known this
from the time I first felt myself as a per­son, apart from you,
wish­ing in my dreams to be some­where warm and dry and not lonely.

So I fed myself on dreams, and grew soft and curvy;
I became a woman with a storm cel­lar filled with dreams,
my breasts and hips and belly a tes­ta­ment to what you couldn’t give me
and how I learned to think ahead so I would never go without.

• « previous poem

• next poem »