This poem keeps drawing me to it, or it to me, and I don’t know why. The last two lines come back to me when I wake up at night, or sometimes when I’ve been walking or hiking for a long time. I don’t know where I found this poem, or where it found me. Sometimes when I read it, the hard times, I feel like a child who doesn’t know what she did wrong, why she’s being yelled at, a child who would do anything to be better and to make it better. Other times I feel a huge relief, a letting-go, as though the you in the poem, in the ending three lines, has finally found me and I don’t have to keep trying anymore. 

[I am], by Vera Pavlova, translated by Steven Seymour

I am 
a nail 
being driven in 
while I try 
to keep 
straight 
hoping 
the carpenter 
will get tired 
or the hammer 
will break 
or the board 
will crack and I 
will roll 
into a cozy nook 
and will find you there 
my love 
my love 

For more information on Vera Pavlova, please click here,
For more information on Steven Seymour, who translated this poem (and who is also, I just found out when I googled him, married to Pavlova), please click here.