I am watching the woman I love

A portrait image of a woman in a dress sitting on a bench with leaves nearby

By Bethany Dixon

tawny gold limbs sun-sprawled

akimbo in the AC’s cool mercy

hand on heart, corrugated

tank top the color of a ripe persimmon

as the late July afternoon hazes sideways.

I am watching the woman I love

scrawl in green pen on blue-lined paper

with the fuschia margins. I can’t tell her

I am watching the woman I love

heat each memory’s brand to a forging shriek

and sear it on her skin. Hell

is a long dark hall, every door knob turning

to another way her father ripped

her body open. That hell-hall

is not her home. She returns

only to heal. Except now

when she returns to gather up her trauma

like a child cradled in her arms

so other men may weigh her story

and call it justice. I return

to the oldest ways. All the women

I love: I ask them to keep vigil. 

They remember

how it feels to trace our sisters’

scars on our own bodies. Boundaries

and protections. A blessing of beads here.

A weaving of herbs there. A battle verse

hummed into the heart.  There is no silence

in this poem. Only singing.

Bethany Dixon is a writer, baker, and pianist living in Ithaca, NY. She works in a tower of books at Cornell's Olin Library by day, crafting poems and pastries by night. Her poetry has been published in the Connecticut River Review, with work forthcoming in the North American Review. Bethany's current work focuses on reclaiming female narratives from ancient Greek texts.