In the works
04/26/2011 01:56 p.m.


Time for Home

She's not the baby.
She’s 7.
She pulls a wagon dutifully behind,
The cargo long ago silenced
By something she’s still too little to grasp.

Beyond hunger is oblivion.

Because when the crying goes too far,
There is nothing
Close enough to touch
The smell of her own excrement
Surrounds, comforts.

There is no one coming
There is no one coming
There is no one

Sometimes, from another world
The faint singing
Of someone familiar teases
Just out of reach
Her ear drums burst again and again
From all that wanting without touch
Lulled by the void instead.

No cooing; no smiles.
No tears; no demands. She lay there
In that vapid, white noise
Empty

At nearly a year old,
Her grandmother’s hands appear
To lift her out of that nursery-tomb
But Grandmother won't acknowledge Death;
Defies the evidence that
The baby is irretrievable,
Sunken down, down, lost.

No, she is not the baby.
She is the baby's keeper,
The guardian.
She is the one who steps forward
In the baby's stead,
Just a placeholder,
Twinkling as her aunties read to her,
Hug her, take her everywhere.
The baby may be too ill to smile,
So she smiles back at them instead,
Little champion, a brilliant sprite.
Tucking the baby neatly away
Willing the love she’s been given to
Save the baby.

She means to stay just long enough
To see the baby revived.

But now, she’s stuck at 7,
Weary,
Bloodied fingers that won’t let go,
Stubby little soldier girl
Too tenacious to surrender the vigil,
Loaded down with rotting food
The baby can never eat,
Singing lullabies that soothe
Three entire generations
Until the grown up self can come
And bring them all home.



I am currently Reflective
I am listening to April