Collect and Recollect

Collect and recollect. These things I do
within, where, present with me is the world
and whatever I could think of it,
and what I have forgotten. Some things
I buried, though they seemed self-buried,
or slipped out of my mind when they had
glided further into me as I believed
them gone. Once my mouth had been aroused
by the side of a man’s thumb moving over it,
the image fixed in me by that impress
recalls the hand, or my heightening,
as if I know my lover when I have him,
or when I have no one. In this way
my mind contains my body and can keep
in mind delight, whether I revisit with the
pleasure of my body, or I revisit thinking
my sad thoughts, or I keep back my desire
like the broken animals.


--Kathleen Peirce, “Confession 10.8.13”