Lyn Lifshin, But Instead Has Gone into Woods & I was four, in dotted (poems)

BUT INSTEAD HAS GONE INTO WOODS A girl goes into the woods and for what reason disappears behind branches and is never heard from again. We don’t really know why, she could have gone shopping or had lunch with her mother but instead has gone into woods, alone, without the lover, and not for leaves or flowers. It was a clear bright day very much like today. It was today. Now you might imagine I’m that girl, it seems there are reasons. But first consider: I don’t live very near those trees and my head is already wild with branches I WAS FOUR, IN DOTTED Swiss summer pajamas, my face a blotch of measles in the small dark room over blue grapes and rhubarb, hot stucco cracking. 17 North Seminary. That July Friday noon my mother was rushed in the grey blimp of a Chevy north to where my sister Joy would be born two months early. I wasn’t ready either and missed my mother’s cool hands, her bringing me frosty glasses of pineapple juice and cherries with a glass straw as Nanny lost her false teeth, flushed them down the toilet then held me so tight I could smell lavender and garlic in her braided her, held me as so few ever have since, as if not to lose more