By: Rachel Schmieder-Gropen

I tell her I love her
and she does not call me
cute.

She says I am brave,
says I am kind, refuses
to boil me down into
a shiny pink pill ripe
for forgetting.

This, I think, is why
she isn’t one for pictures,
why she won’t smile
but turns her face away,
lips pursed, middle finger
curling up like a snake
raised to strike.

She comes out blurred,
caught halfway through
her trip around the sun,
her face a mishmash
of angles and colors
all crammed together
as if God commissioned
a million faces and
the artist drew one.

(It is her way of being
more than a moment,
even here.)