Author: Elizabeth Maynard

One hundred years ago today
you gasped and kicked your way
into a world still reeling
and your mother's trembling arms
She prayed you
through the first days vigilant
hungry to hear every breath
until she finally slept
believing you might live

My own irrelevance
renders me silent
If heroes and villains
are dust here
I can be nothing more

My world is made neat
in little boxes
each carefully contains
a universe of longing

I lose my patience
two hundred questions in
you want answers 
to all I do not know
cannot name and more
I am too tired
to explain the world to you

I can only hold this breath so long
pace and circle
until at last I am easy
six hundred miles each hour
to cross a continent
in thin air

This is a tragedy of your own making
crafted ever so carefully
year upon year
sinking so long
you mistake yourself for an anchor

You blew open the world
in more pieces than can be counted
no matter how long I whisper
or shout

How does a person unbury herself?
Caskets open from the outside
and do not include a shovel

There is no magic
though the greening of the earth
would make you think it

It was a board
from the long lost ship
crumbling in your hands
However much you longed
to hold fast
it slipped free
like every ebbing tide