A fourteen-line poem on healing

1. I cannot freeze sound
2. or collapse phantom scaffolding
3. I open one contradiction
4. after another. They call this “erotic intelligence”
5. or emptiness
6. They abuse the powdery line
7. at once blessed and beautiful
8. and blank
9. as benign limbs
10. Where have you gone in your red dress?
11. You have done nothing wrong and you are not condemned
12. Naked as a word
13. the body’s modifications, no matter how infinitesimal
14. are all that is given

Copyright © 2016 by Julie Carr. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on May 12, 2016, by the Academy of American Poets.