sworn to silence

mom said be quiet
some say
I never spoke
back then

pigtails
dresses
don’t tell
months that felt like years
took years
to get over months

is it unbearable
to not be cherished
then try to join the world
tentative
aloof, and
scared of shadows

staying mean
to keep the walls standing
in the middle
of the crowd
I screamed
my anguish

one on one
I was sworn to silence

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self-pity
doesn’t look good
on the girl
or go with pearls or diamonds
her heart
a pulsing ruby
out of reach
an outlier

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the air talks to my skin
sky and lake
create cloud families above us
let us stay
in meadow grass and flowers
lets’s disappear

Threnody

(2016)
For Mom

I remember the day you told me
it was no good
the end was coming
and all the miracle hopes
and treatments were done

you were calm
you were ready
and I wasn’t
skidding my heels
dragged to the church a month later
baby in my belly
to see something that was not you–
you were gone already

then later
in the garden when
summer came again
I saw you alive in my son’s eyes
then again in a field
of clover and cornflowers

Was I dreaming

The morning is alien
was it a dream?
I slept in London in 1944
stumbling over broken up streets
past bombed-out houses

I woke in the Colosseum
surrounded by lions
blinking and unable to see
dust in my eyes hair mouth
roar of the crowd in my ears

the door leading back outside
opened up to Ethiopia–
the want and cares
of day to day existing
beating against cracked earth

I wandered until finding
a patch of green
and falling back to sleep
I woke up here this morning
the air alien
and frightening