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Regrets
My husband isn’t sure he wants a woman
willing to undress in public
every emotion that occurs to her.
He doesn’t think I ought grind
out page after page of sorrow,
my clear voice like deft fingers
working a row of buttons.
What man, he wonders, would want
what is his laid bare
for strangers, the fabric
of his life, also, tossed off
like lace. But, I tell you, I need to strip
one by one the layers that cover
me, to feel myself take shape
in the open: my lush, dark
places, gentle swell
of my full heart. He doesn’t know
that for me silence is a too tight dress
I can’t wait to get off.
-Francesca Bell
first appeared in The Chattahoochee Review
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