The World According to Poetry #17
Hold Me Back
By Stephanie Wood Miller © 2019
This old habit of bondage
The thinking,
A way I can be or not be
Because I decided
Fixed my mind and got stuck
Bound my own wrists
Covered my own mouth
Screaming for attention
And breath and light
And tiny, sleepy little child dreams
We are twins
Who sleep together back-to-back
Neither lovers nor enemies
What if I cut, finally
The nubbed and knotted thread?
Will my enemy lie down, dead
And surrender its soul to the stony, cold ground?
Or will it rise again
With some kind of new scheme
To hold me down
Or back
Wake!
Know, I am the only enemy