【by Sydney Smith】

I am an old wives’ tale.
Around the fire
they whispered about my face,
and the wind spoke of me
on his latest travel through the wood.

For some reason or another,
wheatgrass seems to still
when I come to town,
all but wavering in anticipation.
And so, every morning
I pull the whetstone
from under my bed
and I wait,
and
wait.

I have not the kind of serrated edges
that have slain silvered men on battlefields,
but the kind of blade that is curved and wicked,
their weight bore on me heavily.
Then they are hair,
they are breasts, they are air.

They are barren
and lie beside, broken
bones and blood and veins and salt.
A weight when not in use
and a weight when used:
a scar of sin and delinquency,
a scar of womanhood.