SUBJECT>This is Not Your Life (past tense) POSTER>Laurel EMAIL> DATE>1111341240 EMAILNOTICES>no IP_ADDRESS>cpe-204-210-183-72.neo.rr.com PASSWORD>aaFRbor6/KzWk PREVIOUS>85079 NEXT> 85121 IMAGE> LINKNAME> LINKURL>

The air was always restless here.
Blue glass clinked in the breeze
as a woman pinned sheets to summer.
Your mother's shadow flapped and flapped

like a wing. She spat into the dusty wind,
balanced a basket on her hip and told you:
Time for dinner. But you ignored her.
In the distance, a crow cawed in a tree

but no one listened. A child can drown
in a puddle when no one's looking.
You can't remember your little brother's name
but you still recall the silent kicking

of legs even after the sharp edges of corn husks
blurred, blades of grass merged and the blue sky
blackened. You'd forgotten the road out of here
was orange. Every morning you were born

into night. The house was a strange,
new world, and you, a compass. East
was the tea pot's hiss. West, the clop
and creak of horse and carriage. South

was at your back, the threshold
you tripped over and over. And north
was the silence of a woman contained within,
breath held, watching her son cry:

Mama! Mama! You caught a cricket crawling
soundlessly across the floor, pressed
the insect in her hand and said: I can hear you
too. We emerged as if from a dark womb

into a light so bright and sudden
that we were temporarily blinded. We drove
home in the stunned silence of survivors
surprised to be alive. The day after,

or the day after that, you grabbed
my wrist like the neck of a wine bottle
you were about to pour. Eyes squeezed
shut, you told me I was beautiful once.

I expected to get down on my knees
and draw cathedrals. Instead, we strung up
our empties in a tree and waited
for a breeze, the first stirring.