Travel Stories For Girls

 

Someone messed with my story when I was still young,

trying to bend it like a bonsai tree

and so I wrapped it in paper and hid it away

in the throat of a bird, clandestinely. 

I was obliged to call my assaulter "mother"

and expected to pretend devotion.

Her mask was on her face so long

that her true face had become the illusion.

Grown, I went where the robins gathered

and found the cardinal who carried my loss.

It was in a grave, wrapped with quilts, 

but had marked its place with two twigs crossed.

I put it back in my body and felt its ice,

then its beat and its fine red heat.

There is nothing I love more than the thing

I smuggled past the killer-- the best of me.

That is not to say that all survived--

those who say they love are heard as fakes,

assassins or fools; give this hungry woman jewels

and see what a pretty figure my turned back makes.

______________

for Word Garden Word List--Sula 

Music: Damien Jurado Orphans in the Key of E