Involution
Daisy Bassen
There was no way to know what you were thinking
When your eyes were blue or what we called blue,
A universal color most familiar from inflection, dusk,
The nameless hour before dawn that I saw enough
To say it—dreadful, hope without hope, the chill that sets
The trembling custard; the hour sleep cannot find
Asylum within. Your eyes, then, watched, expecting
Something I never brought. I gave you the breast,
So you took it, reasonably willing to settle.
I didn’t understand you, we both knew it,
But you didn’t keep secrets then. It took years for you
To give up on me, the slow failure of the sickened hive,
The empty garden. It’s done now, you’ve determined it.
I’m one more person shaking my head at the Pythia,
The smoke streaming from my hair, rosemary-wood, charred.
I need to accept your veil is not for me. You’ll return
To what you conceal, whether or not it’s a jewel in the vault.
Daisy Bassen is a poet and practicing physician who graduated from Princeton University’s Creative Writing Program and completed her medical training at The University of Rochester and Brown. Her work has been published in Oberon, McSweeney’s, and [PANK] among other journals. She was the winner of the So to Speak 2019 Poetry Contest, the 2019 ILDS White Mice Contest and the 2020 Beullah Rose Poetry Prize. She was doubly nominated for the 2019 Best of the Net Anthology and for a 2019 and 2020 Pushcart Prize. She lives in Rhode Island with her family.