POEM: There Are Beings

There Are Beings

I.

There are creatures—

and I can scarcely say it without the word

turning to nothing in the saying —

there are beings

who want to end you

even as they drink in your light,

even as they’re full on your gentleness,

the water they intend to waste.

II.

They come as the winter in wool,

diamonds cold as an open eye,

spring folded into a fist.

They want to widen the locked gate,

part the ribs like curtains,

go into the red-room

and call it home.

III.

First the mind comes —

always first the mind,

bright as a fast flint,

the mouth coiled and erudite dark,

the voice a flute

played by something

that has no fingers.

You begin, god help you,

to love even its snarles.

IV.

There are those in this world

who cannot bear a woman

walking into her own wisdom,

who would rather she remain

the unlit candle,

the unread page,

the garden walled

before the first blooms open.

V.

Their fear is old iron-girded.

It has the first denial,

the first fire stolen from woman’s hands

and renamed her discovery.

VI.

There are creatures —

I can scarcely hold the full weight of it —

who hate the very vessel

that cracked open

and gave them their first breath,

who take the compass of compassion

a woman pressed into their chest

and use it to find their way

back to her throat.

Marni Fraser

0519.2026

Photo by Marni Fraser | 2026