Suspension
monarch butterflies,
everywhere,
gliding
I continue to see
my quality in the clouds;
voice is about to break as if
giving in to the weight of
my worthy / my worry
is over my heels
spine is shifting,
lifting
in a curve forwards
and I defy
gravity
all this time;
all this time,
suspension is what
I’ve been after
and before
Amanda Donovan is a current BLSE student who teaches high school English in the Greater Boston area.
About this poem Amanda says, “This past summer, I went to Bread Loaf in a moment of what felt like mid-air suspension between leaving my life in Connecticut and moving to Massachusetts. I had already quit my teaching job of five years and packed up my life, but I did not yet have a new job lined up. Bread Loaf provided me a place to be suspended for a summer, clinging to nothing, hoping for the best. I’m so thankful for that space at Bread Loaf. I belonged nowhere and it was OK for a while.”