Ruth Williams is the author of Flatlands (Black Lawrence Press, 2018), Conveyance (Dancing Girl Press, 2012), and Nursewifery (Jacar Press, Forthcoming 2020). Currently, she is an Associate Professor of English at William Jewell College and an Editor for Bear Review.



Also by Ruth Williams: Flatlands Conveyance Risk/Reward

Poets Resist
Edited by Logan February
July 18, 2019

Ruth Williams

Childless

I couldn't bring myself to listen to the small voices of children taken from parents because I feared the pin prick of their pain translated across speakers into my ears, I feared the inner softness in me welling uselessly in its pink, my inner without a child, welling in want for a child, not taken from me, but given. In this way, turning away from their pain was my want expressed. The body does not know its own borders. No, it wants and wants with no thought of trespass. I am sick of this softness, the way fear is used to irradiate my love for children, taken from parents, myself, a childless woman, welling with want for a child, wanting to be a child again, naïve to horror, with my parents in my arms, like these children, how tender my pink caring, then, how fertile and potent this welling, crossing between us, could become.
Poets Resist is published by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.