Megan Leonard
Things I Am Not Sorry For
I am not sorry for the starve
That kept me alive like a singed hair
It was what I needed to do to live
The way the wet leaves make a pattern of slicked
Orange and red on the slate-blue sidewalks.
I am not sorry for the haunting of my own bell tower
The walking back and forth for hours
In the rafters, singing to myself
And wrapping my fingers around my own wrists
Over and over again.
It was a comfort I needed to survive
The sound the rain makes when it finally
Hits the pond after a dry summer / after a drought.
I felt very unattached to my body,
Its pains, its grumbling gapes, its rough edges.
Now the bell tower lives in my throat,
And the little wraith I once was lives there too, pacing, and starving,
Hungry/ not hungry,
Singing her songs to my children, my babies.
I tuck them in, warm, dry, full and fed,
I kiss their heads, I sleep their sighs,
And the wraith’s voice deepens, rounds, rings
Like a gong—a gong!—
And I hope she doesn’t haunt their hearts.
Return to Motherhood’s Duality Folio
Megan Leonard (she/they) is the author of Larkspur Queen and Book Of Lullabies. “Things I Am Not Sorry For” is from her forthcoming collection, Mercy, which fuses primary accounts of the 1692 New England witch panic and generational family narratives to ask what are the ramifications of family secrets, and who is allowed to be angry. Meg is a mad, sick writer, the founder of The Writing Mentors, and mom to four amazing kids.