The Women I Remember by Sarah Cooke

The Women I Remember

I awoke to shouting
and shadows cast by a small fire
at the far end of the room.
They say memory is a temple to a past best seen
with technicolor eyes. But I remember the stories
about fires at night and the smell of wet metal
pressed unforgivingly against soft tissue.

The women in petticoats, gloves,
and little tweed jackets they called hysterical,
lobotomized with a needle to the eye,
and locked in asylums like the Trans-Allegheny
(a tourist trap now, two hours from Parkersburg).

I remember the women they tossed coins at
discreetly so they could ride them
like their youth depended on it and then
let them just float away like kites in a rainstorm.

But the thing they don’t want me to remember
is that, even the lightest of objects
will stay tethered if they demand it.

Sarah Cooke is a poet and aspiring comic book writer currently based in Ohio. Her work has been published in a number of print and online journals. She holds an M.F.A. in creative writing with a concentration in poetry from Naropa University.​