“Self-acceptance is self-love in action.” 
― Jodi Livon


INSIDE THE NARRATIVE

A few fellow writers gather at a coffeehouse
to share poetry. I read a narrative piece
about a nameless boy who pretends a painful event
has never happened. He hides

inside a malignant silence, innocence shattered.
His wounds leak into cells under his skin
long after the bleeding has stopped.

I pretend to hide behind the gender switch,
inside fictional scenes, and create places I have touched
but never embraced. My voice remains strong  
through ten stanzas

until a single unexpected stammer 
rips through my veneer,
thin as ice on a lake in early spring.
I’m afraid I could drown in my own metaphors.

I come to a moment when my character 
compares himself to a goldfinch
who leaves winter and enters spring
with bright warm-weather feathers. 
He flies onto a budding branch.
My character knows who he is again.

I recall expecting death one night when
I didn’t know shades of color would reappear 
and develop subtlety, strength, and shape.
Songs would rise from my dried throat. 

The boy in my poem grows through each stanza, 
speaking, becoming whole. Another woman in the group
suggests with a single tremulous glance 
that she, too, could tell a similar story. 
She nods and smiles. I prefer it to applause.