The girl is alive—someone caught her
on video. The girl is alive, alive alive,
the women who fed her one night
cackled at that glimpse of her
face in the freezing forest and I
heard them toast her wild will. How
we accepted such things
when we were girls, but why should
a person expect a group of men might
toss her into a truck, that anyone seeing
her small body walking by should
talk about it unpunished, a joke?
The sun rises slowly over my neighbor’s
back garden, where her sons rehearse
whack whack slap shots and their old
dog Lola quivers on the porch, and soon
my daughter will stagger towards us
forgetful, full of beauty and
future pain. When the nesting herons
who make such a racket at dusk took
over the stone pine, we’d find small
dropped frogs and fish on the street.
A chick had fallen too, long-legged,
speckled, and running. Its mother followed,
relentless and with shrieking
from the trees. So I ask you, what to do
today. Dress, commute, cook, repeat?
Image By: https://i.imgur.com/NHnmeR8r.jpg