On Being Left

There’s a woman in me who drinks poison   
like water, thinks it’s what she needs
to stay alive. I wish she’d learn to savor       
water’s plain taste, enjoy quench and calm.  
But give her hurricane and drowned  
peony blooms and she smiles, raises 
her face to the rain and says, Hit me. 

I can’t stand feeling wind on my skin
because it’s not your hands.

I don’t know how not to hand you   
the match, how not to let you strike it          
and light this house on fire, how not 
to relish disappearing into ash,
my bones crumbled, an exploded       
plum all that’s left of my heart.

The ground that is not true    
ground but spindled grief.

After you’ve swum in the ocean, felt
the current, wave-crash, and depth    
that goes deeper, deeper, and darker, 
to choose a lake, with its smooth
and silt, no matter how fresh the water,        
how relieved the skin to be rid of
the salt’s sting, is to ignore the hunger          
of the man brave enough to love the sea.

by Marie-Elizabeth Mali

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Marie-Elizabeth Mali is the author of Steady, My Gaze (Tebot Bach, 2011) and co-editor with Annie Finch of the anthology, Villanelles (Everyman's Library Pocket Poets, 2012). She formerly co-curated louderARTS: the Reading Series and the Page Meets Stage reading series, both in New York City. Her work has appeared in Calyx, Poet Lore, and RATTLE, among others. She can be found online at www.memali.com.