poetry by ruth osman

The Changeling

At the creak of the door
she unfurls —

face soft as the light
flowing through the curtains
arms fragrant as fresh bread —

and folds herself to me
like the clothes 
we put away last night
each nuzzling the other
in the drawer's warm cave.

By breakfast
she is tart as tangerine
wit edging the teeth
vision keen
every pip, an epiphany.

Intrepid cartographer
scaling my desperate fences
charting herself a new world.

Ruth Osman is a Guyanese singer/songwriter and poet based in the Caribbean twin-island republic of Trinidad and Tobago.

She was shortlisted for the Bocas Lit Emerging Writers Fellowship, 2022. And her poem, "Lost and Found" received an Honorable Mention in the 52nd New Millennium Writing Awards.

Osman views herself as a confluence of ethnicities, traditions and perspectives, like most Caribbean people. Poetry, she says, helps her make sense of those rich, diverse, and sometimes incompatible legacies.