When Marina Tsvetaeva lived in exile in villages surrounding Prague (1922-25) and in Paris (1925-39), she wrote extensively in verse and correspondence on her personal and emotional relationship to Czechia. Scholars have demonstrated how Tsvetaeva created a Czechia through poetry that could serve as a second or surrogate homeland; this article will show that she also imagined Czechia as a personified figure who could actively participate in that relationship. Theoretical reflections on experiences of exile provide many ways for displaced people to attempt to re-create a center of identity and alleviate the devastating loss of their homeland. In Tsvetaeva’s case, creating a poetic Czechia capable of mutual engagement allows a dynamic of guardianship or protection to develop. First, while Tsvetaeva lived in Czechoslovakia, this imagined Czechia served as her protector from the destruction of identity posed by exile as seen in the lyric ‘The Prague Knight’ (‘Пражский рыцарь’). Then, while living in France, Tsvetaeva turned to serve as Czechia’s protector from destruction at the hands of Nazi occupation as seen in the cycle ‘Poems to Czechia’ (‘Стихи к Чехии’). In our own time, concerns of mass displacement and lost centers of belonging are more and more urgently prescient.