My current contemplation is how universal it is for all of us to want to feel good about ourselves and how we edit the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves to that end.
—Sally Estes
Covered in maggots, white and grey,
and tiny granules of poison. No one
wants to remember it this way. It doesn’t
matter if they were real or metaphorical.
The maggots did not wing into butterflies.
The poison was poison. You groveled
and cried. If we can’t be the hero,
we sometimes thrive on becoming
the narrator. It suits our pride. Say:
It happened in someone else’s staircase.
Say: I was younger then. Say: No, they
were ladybugs. Say: It was sand.
But you remember. They were white
and gray, the color of snow on the side
of the highway. Their bodies were soft.
And the poison, it pitted like small stones
into your knees, your bare knees.