do not praise me for exceptional

kindness, for I thought

to give more than I received,

not seeing that I have been

given everything, everything.

Do not wonder either at my good fortune or

my suffering; only now do I

begin to see how each contains the other, how

the birth of each of my daughters is

inseparable,

somehow,

from the other’s loss.

And fame, that red berry

just beyond reach among the thorns-

say I watched it wither, blacken, pecked by

birds and left to rot,

still out of reach,

still not understood.

Say instead

I learned to live with hidden

chocolate, bread baking

in the oven, children

singing in the back seat

all the way home.

By Susan Sibbet

28 Sep This entry was published on September 28, 2013 at 10:11 pm and is filed under Writings by Other Authors. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.