April 6, 2005

Sometimes I just want to give in, become
the heroine in a great nineteenth-century novel,
an earnest and suffering young woman
who makes the decision that will ruin
the rest of her life.

Once the decision has been made
I want-in my white nightgown-
to unlatch the shutter, throw
open the window,
cry out into the rain.

If not Catherine could I at least be
Elizabeth Bennett living
on the precipice of vast disappointment,
on the edge of loneliness and family shame.
To dip just under the surface of the worst
and then to be pulled out
just in time.

Originally published in Post Road (2003)

Eve Grubin’s first book of poems, Morning Prayer (Sheep Meadow Press), appeared in December of 2005. Her poems have been published in The American Poetry Review, Conjunctions, The New Republic, The Virginia Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. She holds degrees from Smith College, Sarah Lawrence College, and Middlebury College’s Bread Loaf School of English. Currently she works as the Programs Director at the Poetry Society of America and teaches poetry at The New School University.