Anya Krugovoy Silver

“Letter to Myself, in Remission, from Myself, Terminal"You'll come to hate your own poems,read them as pretty wisps of colorful thinking,all those images just a splash of colored oilsloshed over a pool gone rancid. Admit it.Atheists always scared you. And no wonder.Those nights you switched on the fan so no one could hear you scream into your pillow, weepingand biting your own hands like a motherless monkey,banded to a body that despised you,a suit of coals with a jammed-shut zipper.Instead of the truth, you took refuge in stories and souls, wore the word survivor like a pink nimbus.All the while, my dear, I waited, knowingyou'd catch up to me one day. I'm holding the black-backed mirror to your face. Look into it.”