WOMAN FOLDING ORIGAMI

In Japan the origami is a symbol of peace and health.
It is believed that if you make 1000 origami birds and pray for someone they will get better.

When your husband said he wanted to leave,
you collected your belongings
and folded yourself up
like an origami bird,
so quiet and intricate
that no one dared question it.

You hid grief from your young son,
folded him into your arms, smiled.

Nights, you danced drunkenly,
bare footed in bars.
When a shard of glass
from a broken beer bottle
wedged itself in your heel,
you refused everyone’s help,
folded a cocktail napkin,
stuffed it in your shoe,
didn’t bother plucking it out,
the skin grown over,
the sting and limp a part of you.


About Anne Champion:
Anne Champion has a BA in Creative Writing and Behavioral Psychology from Western Michigan University and received her MFA in Poetry at Emerson College. She has work published in The Minnetonka Review, Pank Magazine, The Aurorean, The Comstock Review, Poetry Quarterly, Line Zero, Thrush Poetry Journal and elsewhere.  She was also a 2009 recipient of The Academy of American Poets Prize at Emerson College and was recently nominated for an Emerging Writer Grant from The St. Boltolph Foundation.  She currently teaches writing and literature at Emerson College, Massachusetts College of Pharmacy, and Pine Manor College in Boston, MA.  She will be attending Squaw Valley Writer’s Poetry Workshop this summer.