The House where Courage Lives
That night I spent every waking hour staring at my face in the mirror in the darkness. It was the first time I’d looked myself in the eye. In the morning I removed the guard from the fire of my heart, gave careful thought to the paths for my feet, sat at the table by the window and wrote you a letter. After owning my guilt, I asked you to join me on the ferris-wheel, while there’s still time. I carried the bottle of tequila to the sink, unscrewed the lid and tipped it up, witnessed the golden liquid flush away.
Maggie Sawkins is the recipient of the 2013 Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry for ‘Zones of Avoidance’, a sequence of poems inspired by her personal and professional involvement with people in recovery from addictions. Her fifth poetry collection, The House where Courage Lives, is to be published in 2021 by Waterloo Press. Website: https://hookedonwords.me/