I do not remember the day
I vowed to myself
that I would never be seen.
Was I being kicked by the boys
on the long walk home?
Or caught cheating in math class?
Or lying beneath a man I did
not love? I don’t know where
or when, but there was a day
I chose to wear a skin
inside my skin, something akin
to gloves, so that in every moment,
I could control how I was touched.
For years, I wondered why no one knew me.
And I wondered why I felt so alone.
Oh little girl, oh woman now, oh
years of covering up. Oh loneliness
and secrecy I chose instead of love—
I see me and do not judge myself.
I see me as I am. But there is
this second deadened skin
that’s ready to be shed. And here
is the chill of the late spring snow
as it seeps now through to the bones.
And the cold feels good because I feel it.
And I do not want to hide.
And there is this new way of touching
with my tenderest lips, my most sensitive skin,
inhaling musk, so familiar,
so singular. There is this inviting love in.
Love After Love
The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other’s welcome
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you have ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
Derek Walcott, Collected Poems 1948-1984, New York, Farrar Straus Giroux, 1986.
I love those questions up front, that lead from childhood through adulthood so quickly. And this line just feels so elegant,
“I chose to wear a skin
inside my skin, something akin
to gloves, so that in every moment,
I could control how I was touched….
It’s a beautiful poem, so pull of admission and discovery, as life should be. Nothing for me to fiddle with except perhaps that last line. I know you’re paralleling that previous line structure, the “There is…” but those three words “There is this…”. I’d almost say let those three go, place a comma after singular:
“…with my tenderest lips, my most sensitive skin,
inhaling musk, so familiar,
so singular, inviting love in.