The Woman Inside

THE WOMAN INSIDE / Michael Blumenthal There is a woman inside me. She is not beautiful or divine, but when I turn in my sleep, restless with other worlds, she is always there, placing a lilac in my hand, gesturing to the earth, where it all begins and all ends. She knows there are cruel men everywhere, and angels in unlikely places. She knows the darkness is only a passage between light and light, that the wisteria climbing the house are real and lust only tenderness gone wild in the wrong field. She is the one who is always fertile in times of barrenness, the one with the silver hair carrying a candle through the long tunnel. She is Halcyone, calming the waters after all my deaths; she is Eurydice refusing to fade when I look behind me... She is the one who wakes with her arms around me when I wake alone. The Missouri Review · 29 ...