The Girl
–Marie Howe
So close to the end of my childbearing life
without children

-if I could remember a day when I was utterly a girl
and not yet a woman-
but I don’t think there was a day like that for me.

When I look at the girl I was, dripping in her bathing suit,
or riding her bike, pumping hard down the newly paved street,

she wears the furtive look-
and even if I could go back in time to her as me, the age I am now

she would never come into my arms
without believing that I wanted something.

Photo (c) S Donaghy