The Woman

Chris Ellery

October 8, 2022

Maybe God didn’t like

The look of my face when He made it.

Rainer Maria Rilke, “Song of the Little Cripple at the Street Corner”

For a year she was there in the weightroom, 

overweight with a face to make a toad retch

and the vilest of God’s creatures take a back seat.

The fit coeds and gym rats with their biceps, pecs,

and tatts would give her space as if her looks

were some infectious, terminal disease.

She did her best, and gained and gained, 

and beauty glowed from her I couldn’t miss.

When she and I would chat, I felt a strange

attraction, flesh and soul, allure of sure

serenity that made her scars and warts and moles

not invisible, but adornments of her loveliness.

Who gets to say what beauty is, and why?

And who will dare to doubt or mock that I,

since she stopped coming to the gym, can feel 

both tenderly bereft and perfectly fulfilled?

Chris Ellery is a frequent contributor and ardent reader of TPA. His two most recent poetry collections are Elder Tree and Canticles of the Body. Contact him at ellerychris10@gmail.com.