Melissa Andrés
Pressed in Silence
My Mother’s arms became a shawl
to keep us warm in our aloneness,
her smell, not of flowers, but of smoke
taped our past against the cold –
She is the beauty inside us all
long before mirrors were invented.
Melissa Andrés is an American poet. Originally from Cuba, she resides in New York and is at work on her first collection of poetry. Her influences include Edna St. Vincent Millay, Edgar Allan Poe and Virginia Woolf. She is currently a creative writing MFA candidate at Sarah Lawrence College (2020).