Running 'Cause I Can't Fly: The Poet: Anne Sexton, "Courage"

Running 'Cause I Can't Fly: The Poet: Anne Sexton, "Courage"
Excerpt:

"Courage"

"It is in the small things we see it.
The child's first step,
as awesome as an earthquake.
The first time you rode a bike,
wallowing up the sidewalk.
The first spanking when your heart
went on a journey all alone.
When they called you crybaby
or poor or fatty or crazy
and made you into an alien,
you drank their acid
and concealed it.
[...]
Later,
if you have endured a great despair,
then you did it alone,
getting a transfusion from the fire,
picking the scabs off your heart,
then wringing it out like a sock...