(from a song) <br /> <br />Perhaps I was born kneeling, <br />born coughing on the long winter, <br />born expecting the kiss of mercy, <br />born with a passion for quickness <br />and yet, as things progressed, <br />I learned early about the stockade <br />or taken out, the fume of the enema. <br />By two or three I learned not to kneel, <br />not to expect, to plant my fires underground <br />where none but the dolls, perfect and awful, <br />could be whispered to or laid down to die. <br /> <br />Now that I have written many words, <br />and let out so many loves, for so many, <br />and been altogether what I always was— <br />a woman of excess, of zeal and greed, <br />I find the effort useless. <br />Do I not look in the mirror, <br />these days, <br />and see a drunken rat avert her eyes? <br />Do I not feel the hunger so acutely <br />that I would rather die than look <br />into its face? <br />I kneel once more, <br />in case mercy should come <br />in the nick of time.<br /><br />Anne Sexton<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/cigarettes-and-whiskey-and-wild-wild-women/
