Molly Fisk: How to Stop

It depends on the way you were broken: 

Body from soul? Mind from memory? And 

who did the breaking: Say it was those 

you most loved. And when: First grade? 

And how: In the dark? In the car? More 

than once? Every half hour for a hundred 

years? It depends on who you could turn 

to: piano instructor, great aunt. And when 

you grew up, were you kind or cruel? 

Did you tend to overstay your welcome? 

Hide in plain sight? An old man in the park 

late afternoons who silently taught you 

to hold a pen knife until birds emerged 

out of blocks of wood. Were you always 

hungry?

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Molly Fisk’s many books include The More Difficult Beauty (Hip Pocket Press, 2010).

Copyright 2021 Molly Fisk