Deeply personal
yet giving nothing away


I am fully aware of my insignificance

How I blend into the sun-paled patterns
on fading wall paper

My dreams
have left echoes on my children

They have a sense of who I am/was

The way I ran in the sun with the
reverberations of a gun shot
bouncing off the back of my heels

I cannot explain blood
how it coppered on my tongue
and thickened darkly
on the dry earth at my feet

Or how sharp and short
the cry of death is

It does not encompass the loss
the passing
it just ticks it off on a list of lost
and moves beyond

The children know
I am woven of secrets

my shadow never falls the right way
when the sun is high

They have seen my clenched teeth
biting around the tough skin of scar tissue
seeking a way in
or
back

I am accepted
in spite of
because of
my lilting cadence
moving against the conversation

How the slots are never the right shape for me
and yet I wedge in regardless

The gifts I bring

not wrapped
nor tied with ribboned conformities