I Saw a Picture Of My Legs
They were holding up
a building. One of those man-made
yurts, but still, so heavy for a pair
of legs. Actually, they were saving
a baby seal whose mother
had died and it was crying—and my legs
were saying ah, shhhh.
And they were a priest, two
priests, and the faithful were waiting
in line with open mouths
for my legs to extend
a holy wafer. My legs
were one-thousand-year
comets. They were
archangels. They gave
their lives for a horde of faceless
people who were about to
fall off the sharp edge
of a cliff. If you look closely
those people really do
have faces—freckles, dimpled
chins, glasses sliding
down noses, and in some
of their eyes you can see
they really want to be saved.
Stacy Boe Miller is a prose writer and a poet. Her work can be found in The Sun, Copper Nickel, Mid-American Review, Bellingham Review, Terrain.org, and other journals. Her book Ready to Answer With Hunger is forthcoming from C&R Books. More of her work, including information about the WorkWhile podcast can be found at stacyboemiller.com.
Currently Reading:
Women Who Run With the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes
Brown Women Have Everything by Sayantani DasGupta
The Woman Who Married a Bear by Tiffany Midge
(“So funny! The three books I'm reading. I'm clearly interested in the lives of women--both archetypical and real!” - Stacy)
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