Poetry by Marie Marchand

             ​​​Kyle Pearce CC




Make Believe


No one believed
the hairline fracture
of my wrist
              except you--
the eight-year-old girl
trapped in my eight-year-old body 
crying alone in the pink room
holding your koala
while outside the adults
laughed over their
dry vermouth.

The doctor had to point 
to the shadowy sliver 
on the x-ray before my
parents believed me.

It wasn’t the first or
last time I needed external back-up
as proof.

If emotions had x-rays, I’d have 
an easier time explaining myself.
I could point to the ashen fissures,
the inlets of brokenness and pain,

and others would 
believe me
                 automatically.

The eight-year-old girl
trapped in my fifty-year-old body 
is wondering:

What’s it like?
To be believed 
                 automatically?

​


​
Marie Marchand is Poet Laureate of Ellensburg, WA. Her poetry has been published in Catamaran Literary Reader, California Quarterly, Paterson Literary Review, Tiny Seed Journal, MOONLOVE, High Plains Register, and numerous chapbooks. Her new book Gifts to the Attentive will be published in mid-2022 by Winter Goose Publishing. As a mental health advocate and person with lived experience, she believes that poetry is a testament to persistence through struggle and the ultimate affirmation of resilience.