The World Is Built on Quiet Things

Tilda does not flinch at us,

does not ask for names.

She only drinks, only waits—

closer to peace

than the poems we write.

At a round table,

six girls, one boy,

wiping the remnants

of a stillborn dream

across paper.

Tilda is my teacher’s tortoise.

She does not tense at the white of my page,

nor at learning that a woman’s body

carries pain within itself,

while a man must search for it elsewhere.

You must be bored, Tilda,

chewing at that leaf.

Do you ever wake

and feel like your body isn’t yours?

I do.

A shadow, stretched thin by my mind,

fading, folding into itself.

I run my fingers over its face,

the curve, the hollow.

I want to know the pain built in.