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I was spread out dailyand examined for flaws.

Anne Sexton

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Anne Sexton
Age: 45 †
Born: 1928
Born: November 9
Died: 1974
Died: October 4
Poet
Writer
Newton
Massachusetts
Anne Gray Harvey
Spread
Examined
Flaws

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The day of fire is coming, the thrush will fly ablaze like a little sky rocket.
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I lay there silently, hoarding my small dignity. I did not ask about the gate or the closet. I did not question the bedtime ritual where, on the cold bathroom tiles, I was spread out daily and examined for flaws. I did not know that my bones, those solids, those pieces of sculpture would not splinter.
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I did not know the woman I would be nor that blood would bloom in me each month like an exotic flower, nor that children, two monuments, would break from between my legs.
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But my future is a secret. / It is as shy as a mole.
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Everyone has left me except my muse, that good nurse. She stays in my hand, a mild white mouse.
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She is so naked and singular. She is the sum of yourself and your dream. Climb her like a monument, step after step. She is solid.
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I think it will be a miracle if I don't someday end up killing myself.
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So I won't hang around in my hospital shift, repeating The Black Mass and all of it. I say Live, Live because of the sun, the dream, the excitable gift.
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Look to your heart that flutters in and out like a moth. God is not indifferent to your need. You have a thousand prayers but God has one.
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I tell it stories now and then and feed it images like honey. I will not speculate today with poems that think they're money.
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Somebody who should have been born is gone. Yes, woman, such logic will lead to loss without death. Or say what you meant, you coward . . . this baby that I bleed.
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Everyone in me is a bird I am beating all my wings
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My safe, safe psychosis is broken. It was hard. It was made of stone. It covered my face like a mask. But it has cracked.
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Be careful of words, / ... they can be both daisies and bruises.
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I remember the stink of the liverwurst. How I was put on a platter and laid between the mayonnaise and the bacon. The rhythm of the refrigerator had been disturbed.
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The windows, the starving windows that drive the trees like nails into my heart.
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You must be a poet, a lady of evil luck desiring to be what you are not, longing to be what you can only visit.
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I'm hunting for the truth. It might be a kind of poetic truth, and not just a factual one, because behind everything that happens to you, there is another truth, a secret life.
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What's the point of fighting the dollars when all you need is a warm bed? When the dog barks you let him in. All we need is someone to let us in. And one other thing: to consider the lilies in the field.
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Thumbs grow into my throat. I wear slaps like a spot of rouge.
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