O

by Marylisa DeDomenicis

I coax it out. It doesn’t want to show

at first. Or else it will not sleep. Or go.

And pounds my door. I learn to

rise and lie down at the same time.

I learn to turn myself inside out,

peel myself back like a petal, open

to receive him where my pulse

attempts to flee and close around him

simultaneously, consume and feed.

I lose myself to gain myself. Then gain

myself to lose - recycle like rain, hover

above and fall to puddle below myself. Both

on the inside and on the outside of my body

waiting for my body to come through

to the other side, both liquid and solid,

never still enough to keep.

Marylisa was the 2010 recipient of the Toni Brown Memorial Scholarship. Her chapbook, Almost All Red,  won the Still Waters Press Poetry Chapbook Competition and was nominated for a Pushcart prize. In addition her poems have been published in books, a calendar, a broadside, and in various print and online publications. She is realizing her girlhood dream of living in a cottage near the ocean while writing.

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