Today's poem is by Simone Muench & Jackie K. White

Self-Portrait Lined by Anna Akhmatova
       

The secret of secrets is inside me again
spooling its prickly threads into a twine
threat, a hanging loop, or a cordon

of light around my neck as I rise, shedding
the evening from my sleeves. Asking myself,
am I the outline or the interior? Or an offering

between, like a mannequin draped each day
in another's making, with a make-shift
face, open-palm gesture, a kind of heft

against hopelessness—a supplication
to the sun gods who lead a veiled dance,
braiding shadow to silhouette, eyelet

to hook. The more the exterior resembles
the delicacy within, the quieter I can keep it,
or choose to let it rustle like a silk lining

while my silence shirrs the incandescent
curve of skin, hips wreathed in porch light.
A gold earring glitters against the dusk:

I am leaning forward into the hush, spooling
loose again, from limb and cloth and land—
I cannot tell if it is the day or the world ending.

Copyright © 2025 Simone Muench & Jackie K. White All rights reserved
from The Under Hum
Black Lawrence Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission