Portrait of Her Before
Before the knees went,
the long trips into silence winding down like a toy,
and the years rattling like pills in that beige house;
before the miscarriage, the affair,
the porchful of stray kittens
that tumbled toward the graves
of all those Gettysburg men:
this was her.
You’d think the her before all that
would be happy, scarless
and new as an egg. At home
in a garden bed, face shining with effort.
At a window with the green sea beyond,
turning to greet someone
who just entered the room. Her
caught in some moment of lightness–
about to laugh, to eat a plum,
to brush away a tendril of auburn
as she bends to the page of a book.
But this her
will have none of it, lips pressed thin
as the cut stem of daffodil she holds in her hands like a knife.
Thousands more ochre the fields behind her,
calling out in a chorus: she knows.
Erin Vaughn is a poet whose work explores the intersections between the self and the other. Her work is currently being considered for publication in The Potomac Review. She lives and works in Gaithersburg, MD, with her family and two dogs.