I'm Not Going to Return

Jill Alexander Essbaum, a poet, is coming tonight to do a reading at our school.  She is often described as an erotic Christian writer.  Obviously, this can get pretty interesting.  Her poems are really moving and strong.  I feel like they also speak a lot about strong women in particular, but show at the same time that they have feelings that get hidden beneath their strong exterior.

I love a lot of her poems, but this one along with a few others especially stuck out:

Family Photograph

Non Redibimus

We shall not come again, not to this wet

            and summer day, nor to the waylaid place

where you laid waste to me and I to you,

            and where we reminisced recalling who

did what to whom.  We shall not come again.

            Not to the bed we thrashed nor to the memory

of the way I brushed my hair back, nights,

            nor to the air we dared to share to breath,

or couldn't quite.  We shall not come again.

            No more, my face seen round your corner, or

your briefcase found beneath my table.  We

            weren't able, apt or sane.  We shall not come

again.  Nor cry nor clutch, not even once

            again.  We shall not cover up in quilts

or bear the beast of one another's guilts

            or sit in silences made saddest by

what was.  We shall not come again.  Because.