For Never Wanting
Previously published by Crow Literary Review
Anne Le i g h Pa rri sh
I say I don’t like being alive and
She says, you’re making
God mad
She’s a little stupid, this girl
Adopted by old parents
With a boring pleasant house
Whose dusty sun porch
Looks benignly on the snowbound lawn
I say, what if everything you dream was
Dreamed before by someone who died long ago?
And your sleeping brain is like a magnet
Drawing down all that sticky blue-green hunger?
She has no idea what I mean, so
We play with tiny pink tea cups,
Make the sound of liquid being poured
And might become good friends
If only she knew cold hearts the way I do
Or the slap of hands
Or fear
But she doesn’t
I ask, so how does God pay us back?
And she says, for what?
I think hard, then say,
For never wanting to be born
35
Cauldron Anthology