Mid-Point

Now in the middle of my life
my journey is to forgive
everything that’s happened.
                      —Diana Marie Delgado

Imagine having a job that dispenses forgiveness, like priest or sin-eater. Bread balanced on the knife of the tongue, pre-swallow. I have consumed my fair share of other people’s crimes. The more ground I gain, the more their deeds dull, the more I understand the other side of the moon is an imaginary place. I will learn to live without those gray fields, but there are whole continents on this planet I won’t ever visit—news to my 10-year-old self, who stored dirt under her nails. I think of my untraveled body as an iceberg, all the menace below. What of us ends up rising? By the mid-point of any trip, I tire of regret, so the rest of the journey takes place in my skin, a blue map that reads like a prayer. Its words will extend beyond itself, absolve the feet that wanted to keep walking. 

Linda Dove holds a Ph.D. in Renaissance literature and teaches college writing. She is also an award-winning poet, and her books include, In Defense of Objects (2009), O Dear Deer, (2011), This Too (2017), Fearn (2019) and the scholarly collection of essays, Women, Writing, and the Reproduction of Culture in Tudor and Stuart Britain (2000). Poems have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, the Robert H. Winner Award from the Poetry Society of America, Best of the Net, and Best Microfiction. She lives in the foothills east of Los Angeles, where she serves as the faculty editor of MORIA Literary Magazine at Woodbury University.

A Song for Linda