INSOMNIA by Mary Donnelly

INSOMNIA

As a child, I was
not strong enough
to be kind.
Fear made me
cruel. Made me lazy.

And so I said
things—not often,
though frequent
enough—that now
keep me up at night

as I slowly age
on a long blue couch.
Things I can’t
take back. Un-
breakable things.

*

Mary Donnelly is a Brooklyn-based educator and video producer whose poems have appeared in The Brooklyn Rail, Hanging Loose, Prairie Schooner, The Literary Review, and The Yale Review, and in the chapbook Mad World Colored Oil (Dancing Girl Press). She teaches through Gotham Writers Workshop and is a senior editor for DMQ Review.