Meggie Royer
When my great-grandmother survived
the potato famine,
she survived the exodus
that came with it.
Blight upon blight.
First came the dreams:
clustered, gone. Spoiled.
Eyes sprouting like tubers
in the dusk. Dirt so black it shone.
A fear of becoming married
when you were already married.
The dread of learning that living another year
required living another year.
More is what passed down through the bloodline:
more as not enough, as too much, as nothing.
In the beginning, I learned to ask men:
What can you give me?
What have you taken?
Intrepid, some were at first,
like selling land, like debting others
to absolve their own.
Our women were never taught abundance.
Just that only morning
looked like morning.
Meggie Royer is a Midwestern writer and the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Persephone’s Daughters, a literary and arts journal for abuse survivors. She has won numerous awards for her writing and mixed media art and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize several times. Her newest book, If the Darkness is Lacking, was published in October by Kelsay Books.
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