You
are worth dying my hands black.
Just
as I dug my heels into the sand as the creek rushed by,
willing
myself not to be swept away and to listen with every gram of my being
-to
feel the word feathers-
I
will dig my light fingers into your black hair,
tinting
it deeper, to match your height and bearing on horseback.
You
laugh and ask if I want to be black- because it would be a step down-
and
I laugh and say why not- because at least I wouldn't feel like an
alien.
I
am spectating pain.
The
girls strip to their shorts and lay in the water to listen.
I
gingerly step into the sand.
(I
have just started to bathe in the river)
You
sit, with your huge breasts tipping down toward the washing board
as
you pour water of ashes over the ripped clothes,
scrubbing
and beating and rinsing and bleaching
until
they are cleaner than mine will ever be
(I
have just started to wash in the river)
You
tell me of the day when your brother was taken
Pulled
from his wife's hands in front of his two small children
And
found with a bullet wound that split his skull in two
Your
sister speaks up
they
were never the same.
We
saw him, but kept the coffin closed.
No
one is ever the same.
You
tell me of the day that you heard he had returned,
rode
out proclaiming,
and
came back to hear that he was dead.
That
when his father lifted his broken body,
his
head fell to the dirt.
His
father works to the bone now.
You
came back to see his wife's house taken apart
and
stacked at the side of the road,
as
your people lost the light in their eyes and began to leave their
land.
I
remember that my jaw dropped when I heard your womb had never held a
child.
You
are a mother.
I
know from your seven daughters who look nothing like each other,
and
I know from your long arms and Sabbath greetings
and
I know because you told me that you've never been able to stop
cooking huge meals
just
in case.
And
I know, because you smoothed my back
and
grated onion with sugar, and tied the poultice on,
and
with your strident prayer, you took the hands and voice
that
have been shaped by great pain,
and
used them to heal a small pain,
but
pain nonetheless.
