trout

The Diary

Anna Smaill

She places things into a receptacle
where they’ll be held
in frozen precision,

like a finely crafted terrine.
She is looking for
the “breathing apparatus”

of expression, through which
she might hyperventilate
and rise toward the light.

A delicate entry fits
all the notables,
like keys to the posterity

she wants to enter.
This and that memory,
a first written word: museum.

In another, she feels
the weight of her frustration
like a bag of stones, berates

the clumsiness of hands.
But closes with a flourish:
“I tap my foot,

lean my head to one side
in the autumn of breezes,
look harder in the mirror,

smile at myself and say,
 “le métier, my dear,
le métier.”