The endless ways, the days and nights,
secret shakes, coded notes, smoking
behind the shed, the specific details

of fornication left out of movie scenes,
hidden under covers, hinted in books,
song lyrics, surveyed in prayer, spread

in magazine pages hidden under rocks,
photos that disgraced the rain and left
more questions than they answered, and

Mother Earth, please tell me: What does
virgin mean? At what point will I know?
When may I eat the apple? And when I eat

the apple, will knowing just fall onto me?
Will there be new monsters to battle? Will
knowing mean throwing everything else away?

Or does knowing unveil new patterns in the canopy?
At what point do we abandon the blueprints
and assemble by feel in the dark, just wing it?

But the world only shrugs and rolls over,
and I’m born once again into bigger rooms, broken in,
tanned and softened, a looser grip on the details.

The breaking was easy but spectacular, like
heroes to crucify and fools who lose everything
that possessed them on the way down.

# # #

Back in the 90s, Christine Stephens-Krieger finished her MFA at WMU, published about 35 poems in various journals, won some awards, and appeared in the PrePress Awards Volume II: An Anthology of Emerging Michigan Writers. She then submerged, taught herself to paint and raised a child. This new collection of poems is her best work so far.

Photo: Sasha Nadelyaeva