Inspired by a poem from Rilke’s Book of Hours

“I am city by the sea

Sinking into a toxic tide.

I am strange to myself, as though someone unknown

Had poisoned my mother as she carried me.

 

It’s here in all the pieces of my shame

That now I find myself again.

I yearn to belong to something, to be contained

In an all-embracing mind that sees me

As a single thing.

I yearn to be held

In the great hands of your heart-

Oh let them take me now.

 

Into them I place these fragments, my life,

And you, God-spend them however you want.”