What do they expect? // Marge Piercy

[iatrogenicmyth.livejournal.com]

What traces have I left
on all the bodies I have held?
Do they remember my mouth?
Let them forget.

Some come like cats howling
in the night for sex withheld.
Some have gone from my mind.
Their scent has drifted off.

Some I remember with anger
but that too runs down the drain.
Maybe the sink is still dirty.
Maybe the water is clean.

I dream of none of them.
I dream of my mother and cats.
I dream of danger and hunger.
I dream my dying.

What prints do we leave
on old lovers?  Do they wash
off or wear down?  Sometimes
they turn up expecting

that I will still be the girl
they bedded, maybe they still
see her smooth and willing.
They find only me

like a old oak rooted deep,
like a cat who has learned
where to find her food
and where she will only starve.

Comments

[http://users.livejournal.com/__floozy__/]

like * thank you:)

[onestringed.livejournal.com]

love the final stanza, thank you.

[moonglows.livejournal.com]

is the first line of the last stanza a typo? "like a old oak rotted deep." Shouldn't it be *an* "old oak"?