What I have known here

Is the measure and taste

Of shadow, though some days

Peel into layers of light, ringing

The bell of me, swinging my heart

From a string on the wind despite

The smoke in my belly, despite

The choke of seeing and knowing

Only in part, as a cherubim blind in all

But one eye, a finless fish in the water

Of her being. What I have known

With sweet and close knowledge is pain,

and I must be grateful to know something

—knowing is a gift. I wonder whether Icarus,

Dying, rejoiced to know the sun, rejoiced to have

That single moment

Of nearness

​

-Haley Hodges Schmid