Lolita (1955)
Somehow, I can still feel the book burning under my shirt
and I remember the shirt, white, billowing at the edges,
the one-handed bike ride, my right arm wrapped around
the jagged corners, dulled with cloth,
the path home, darkening
behind me. Always, I am outrunning the darkness,
with this book flush against my stomach, flush against flesh
The untanned middle, the small belly button
like an eyehole in a fishing lure,
I did not yet know what bait I was
But I knew to be afraid, like I knew to cry
when my mother told me, through the open door of my bedroom,
that I would wear a training bra soon; The way she said it like a fact,
but also a promise,
a swear, but also a swear word
I did not yet know all the words I was about to be
but trees lit my path home, trees with their grasping arms,
burning branches of green smoke
The sky, a placid eye I did not know was watching me,
and at home, when the narrator,
unreliable and unsurprising as he was,
reveals himself to be a villain—
Later, as I read on my back under the yellow covers,
tented, panting, sweat like a film over my eyes—
Reveals himself, like Dracula pulling back the cape, a woosh of wind,
even then, I could tell that he believed,
really, truly believed,
that she was a villain too
Just look at her red smile, her plaits with their ribboned ends,
the strange omen of her body, changing all at once,
like the Eucharist
becoming something new, some holy or sin,
and I knew I was changing, even then,
but whether God was entering or leaving me,
I still can’t tell
Maisie Williams is a writer and artist from Nashville, TN. Her poetry has been published with Rattle and FOLIO, and her creative nonfiction has been published in Thirteen Bridges and The Los Angeles Review. Her poem “Cure” was selected as the winner of the 2025 Boston University Academy of American Poets Prize, judged by Rosanna Warren. She graduated from Boston University’s Creative Writing MFA in 2025.
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