You Fit Into Me

You fit into me

like a hook into an eye

a fish hook

an open eye

By Margaret Atwood

Twice Shy

Her scarf a la Bardot,
In suede flats for the walk,
She came with me one evening
For air and friendly talk.
We crossed the quiet river,
Took the embankment walk.

Traffic holding its breath,
Sky a tense diaphragm:
Dusk hung like a backcloth
That shook where a swan swam,
Tremulous as a hawk
Hanging deadly, calm.

A vacuum of need
Collapsed each hunting heart
But tremulously we held
As hawk and prey apart,
Preserved classic decorum,
Deployed our talk with art.

Our Juvenilia
Had taught us both to wait,
Not to publish feeling
And regret it all too late -
Mushroom loves already
Had puffed and burst in hate.

So, chary and excited,
As a thrush linked on a hawk,
We thrilled to the March twilight
With nervous childish talk:
Still waters running deep
Along the embankment walk. 

                                                                    By Seamus Heaney

Rapunzel Explains the Tower

She said "to keep you safe" and I understood.

She'd had enough of men's wild hands

in the rampion and parsley, one more garden

besieged. Here, only women spoke.

And no mirrors — nothing to make me question

the softness of my skin, the redolent body.

But he came, as they all do,

through the window, all dash,

claiming to love my voice.

One day she found him clinging

to my hair and sent him packing.

She noticed the new swell of my girl's waist.

She knew the danger of 16–year–olds

with golden curls where I was going.

So she came at me with scissors

and turned me out into the world. It was blinding.

In the desert, I heard her words,

that no prince would be my rescue.

I wrap my baby in silk, smash the palace mirrors.

Jeannine Hall Gailey

All You who Sleep Tonight by Vikram Seth

All you who sleep tonight
Far from the ones you love,
No hand to left or right
And emptiness above -

Know that you aren't alone
The whole world shares your tears,
Some for two nights or one,
And some for all their years.