Where the Beasts Are

Erin Scudder

One night,
she was full of beasts

(or at least,
the beasts within her reared up).

They weren't the beasts of illness, I think –
these were other, private beasts, that shimmied down

and shook her.
I crept down and took her

sorrows at face-value
as she taught me to do,

saying "no one can ever tell you
what wilds are within you."