Stepping Stones Magazine

With frost the ladybugs become
a shapeshifting wound
covering the southern side
of our white stucco home.
Their molten collection
brings them into relief.

Stubborn dozens slide inside
surviving in the fireplace,
the dining room,
the darkened wardrobe;
crawling over the one tie left behind—
left ready with its double wide windsor
and little white whales—
left ready for a train, a date, a neck
to choke, to match
the fury of Ahab,
a woman scorned,
a woman who will crush the whales
beneath her pegs
and kick the creatures
through open screens.

But my legs are tissue,
and heart just as thin,
so I’ll live within the wound,
and rock in the belly of this house
until the scab flies off
and leaves my toughened skin
at the gate of a winter
no whale could survive.

• Bio
• Latest Posts

Elise M. Tobin

Elise M. Tobin began writing poetry as an undergraduate at the University of Mary Washington. She earned her M.A. from UConn and currently teaches English in an urban school district.

Latest posts by Elise M. Tobin (see all)

• Whaling - 18 April, 2012
• Death of a Student - 11 March, 2012

• ← Visitors
• The Night →