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A not admitting of the wound (1188) by Emily Dickinson

A not admitting of the wound Until it grew so wide That all my Life had entered it And there were troughs beside —

A closing of the simple lid that opened to the sun Under the tender Carpenter Perpetual nail it down —

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Seeing for You

The leaves left at the tops of trees sound like rain in the wind. November— the sparrows play at being leaves, the leaves at being birds. I play at seeing for you now that you play at being gone.

- Linda Allardt

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limina

the last quiver of dusk or the first sigh of dawn your eyes on me from across the room a trick of the light

the pull when it’s right the nudge when it’s not a slight of hand

the way the sun or a good lover’s touch warms the thighs a false kind of gentle

sometimes the tongue slips, no, presses on syllables like how you said I want you, when I was dying to hear I want you

we have reached the tipping point from ache to break

all this time, my heart we’ve been fumbling for the space between lightning and thunder

as if they’re not one in the same

- Cora Finch

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Growing up feels like your skin no longer fits. Like you just want to crawl out of that thinly stretched space and lay down in the grass and sob for hours. Instead, I am in a cafe eating lunch and trying not to scream. Looking around wondering if anyone else in this building is doing the same thing, wondering if they ever have and, if so, how they got through it. Maybe I would calm down if I just had the assurance that other people have looked in the mirror and no longer recognized themselves.

— Kalyn RoseAnne Livernois, from Ten True Things

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Suzanne Scanlon, from "Committed: On Meaning and Madwomen," published in 2024

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Simone de Beauvoir, from "Inseraparable: A Never Before Published Novel,"

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Sharon Olds, Stag’s Leap

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Plucked series by Geir Moseid

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Dorianne Laux, from Smoke: Poems; "The Best Blues Singer in the World Will Never Stop Singing,"

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Hala Alyan, from Armadillo; "The Twenty-Ninth Year," originally published in 2019

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Janelle Tan, from “Turnstile Jumping"

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"Beautiful Losers", Leonard Cohen

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sometimes a poem feels like November

that first cold snap a silent draft opening a window you thought was nailed shut

like stepping outside relieved of your coat and shoes

the reverberations of leaves . as they fly from the trees

a swallow of crisp apple cider and a fire in the hearth

like ochre and abundance

a giving . an offering . a gathering of all that blossomed in spring, flourished in summer, and mellowed into fall

like dressing up the spoils of a back- breaking harvest for a roomful of strangers

a single hour of golden before the day slips into darkness

it’s fork-tender, sweet, easy as pie

which is to say — messy, time consuming, prone to crumbling

yet somehow worth the effort once it settles on your tongue

- Cora Finch

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“Only one thing would do me good right now. To fall asleep with my head on your lap, while you whispered sweet tasty nothings to help me forget the rottenness of the world.” She, in return, writes tenderly: “How are you, sweetheart? How are your hands?”

— A letter exchange between Clarice Lispector and her husband, quoted in Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector by Benjamin Moser

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Edna St. Vincent Millay, from a diary entry featured in Rapture & Melancholy; The Diaries of Edna St. Vincent Millay