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Edited on Tue Nov-06-07 11:53 AM by BlueIris
"Aging Female Poet on Laundry Day"
I prop up my face and go out, avoiding the sunlight, keeping away from the curve where the burnt road touches the sky. Whatever exists at the earth's center will get me sooner or later. Sooner. Than I think. That core of light squeezed tight and shut, dense as a star, as molten mirrors. Dark red and heavy. Slab at the butcher's. Already it's dragging me down, already I become shorter, infinitesimally. The bones of my legs thicken—that's first— contract, like muscles. After that comes the frailty, a dry wind blowing inside my body, scouring me from within, as if I were a fossil, the soft parts eaten away. Soon I will turn to calcium. It starts with the heart.
I do a lot of washing. I wash everything. If I could only get this clean once, before I die.
To see God, they told me, you do not go into the forrest or city; not the meadow, to seashore even unless it is cold. You go to the desert. You think of sand.
—Margaret Atwood
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