Please welcome poet Kelly Spence to formidableWoman. 

With the immediately intimate opening lines of her poem, Mine, we are drawn in, our curiosity arises alongside foreboding:

I keep this thought/ inside a matchbox/ a slow burn

We are at once, familiar commiserates with

the keeper’s cry

We know this:  lover’s kiss; the deep ache of longing; how we keep our losses

pressed and dried/ among musk pages

These verses are prayers,

oh, rising tide/ bathe me holy

glimpses into the Deep Feminine, into the ritual yin burial within where, to the Mother’s womb we carry our wounds, not to hide but to heal, to integrate, to transmute, to become who we are now, and now, and now, making and remaking ourselves:  our own.

Read the poem in it’s entirety here:  Mine by Kelly Spence

Kelly Spence is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker in Gainesville, FL. She is a devoted mother to a two year old daughter and a passionate advocate for women. Kelly currently facilitates a support group called ‘Military Moms’ for female Veterans with children. Kelly hopes her work will allow readers to become delightfully distracted from the demands of daily life.  Find her on Instagram as Mitchellpants

Images:  All are used with permission via Creative Commons unless otherwise noted.  Rights reserved.  1) closed matchbox by JE Theriot; 2) Leaf 2.0 by Patrick aka Herjolf   3) Book Heart by Gabriela Pinto   4)water droplet by {deepapraveen   5) Ammonite fossil by James St. John

(c) d. ellis phelps is the author of this blog and of the novel, Making Room for George.  Find more of her published work here.