Poetry by Elizabeth Starck
I’m just a little alarmed by you in your grey dress.
You – a menacing moth on my window
the part between the screen and the glass
(where you can’t really tell what’s in and what’s out)
watching me in my sheets as I eye you sideways,
as if to say I see you, yet not enough to
touch you
lovingly, with affection, maternally
or to run from you.
And once I’m past the skip in my heart,
I sit dazed and daunted, aware that you’re there.
Yes, I am a bit alarmed by you,
always reading my mind and when suddenly
I see you inside, it is I
who won’t leave that closedwindowroom,
afraid you will empty my brain
of its greybrown bits and tell me what I really am.
For you have been watching me all along
and I only saw me when I noticed you.
Elizabeth Starck is based in Ohio and Western New York. Her work explores family, embodiment, and the quiet violences of care. Her poems come from her notes app, and were written late at night (or early in the morning, depending on how you look at a night).
