berlin lit

Alice Miller

 

Inside

 

Everything’s gripped inside someone else

it feels in the weeks after the body’s stopped

and the drugs do not expel the embryo,

it holds on with what’s left of its

ghost-fingers, and refuses to let go

until the surgeon comes to pry it free.

 

Everything’s inside something, woman in 

room, thoughts in head, bed in 

ward. Everything’s inside, and I can’t decide

if this is a good thing or not.

 

But it’s neither, “of course”, good nor bad,

as the surgeon comes and loosens out

the body. No longer inside,

but outside, of nothing. Destroyed or never

there. Floating. In my head, at least,

 

a thought, at least. Across the way, a baby

cries, a sound so ordinary. All so ordinary,

inside. It’s only what’s outside that must be let free.