I am somebody. I am me. I like being me. And I need nobody to make me somebody.
Two snakes wrap around my hands: my soul and my lover.
In the moonlight.
Julia de Burgos, from Song of the Simple Truth: Poems; “Lover,”
I am the territory no one will inhabit. The borderlands of motherhood / and not again. Want has no business here.
Erika Meitner, from “By Other Means,”
Copia
How I loved her and loved her.
Distant mother, sea, endlessly passionate sea, nothing but water and moon, nights and nights.
Juan Ramón Jiménez, tr by Robert Bly, from “Nocturne,” wr. c. 1916
To find my own, my secret hiding sense and place,
Robert Duncan, from Roots & Branches: Poems; “Childhood’s Retreat,”