Expecting

What my heart first waking whispered the world was.

I picked these summer roses because
they looked so disgusting waiting there
wanting the bees to come and fuck them.
On this lonely afternoon what is left
of my youth gushes up like a geyser
as I sit in the sun combing the lice
out of my hair. It is June seventeen
but the sun keeps going in. Rabbits
die of indecision when an experiment
forces them to be forced two ways.

I need a house, a husband, money,
a job, friends, furniture, affection,
servants to look after the children, clothes,
a car, a bicycle, a destination.
I see now I was the one-too-many.
I was the mistake. The circumstances
in which I find myself are marginal
notes, never the text. In the thick hedgerows
the summer flowers like their rapturous
lives that have nothing to do with me.

(From Elizabeth Smart’s diary, June 1943)