Confession
for Susan Bergman
by Luci Shaw

In your presence, at no great urging from you,

I hold my purse bottom-up over a cascade

of scraps, my self turning inside out

as though my need, too, were bottomless. A tissue

floats to the table. A shopping list and an old

Safeway receipt (food already eaten). A wallet

full of worn green, outgrown photos of my children,

the California driver's license that seems

to confirm my West Coast existence. Tarnished coins

varnished by a thousand palms. Tablets to ease heart

burn. A scarlet comb tangled with a disconnection of hairs.

The keys to house, car, and all the locked doors

in my life. A datebook that foretells the multiple

expectations of the future.

Inside-out, and the leather interior

is naked, visible as skin, seams as ragged as my

laugh lines, the emptiness behind the glossy calfskin

and the gold-tone metal: I will discard. I will purge.

I will erase, scour, reverse a reamed-out

waiting heart. See, at last, I am hollow for you. See

how I need to be filled.

Poems reprinted by permission of the author.