WEBVTT

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"Returning."

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"I've been somewhere.

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My mind struggles to remember
the corn fields and fruit

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trees blooming like
a young woman's body,

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and the place where my
brothers built the shade

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house for our sister's marriage
beneath the slender Moon,

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where my mother wove
her last blanket.

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I've walked this empty
road before in the month

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of the big harvest,
when the people left

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the Canyon with wagons
loaded with peaches and corn

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to take to the relatives and
to trade with our neighbors who

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live on the high, windy mesas.

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I'm returning to the Red
Rocks that once cradled us,

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and from whose arms we were
torn when death marched in,

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surrounded us, and slaughtered
everything that we loved.

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I am the kidnapped one, and
survived to escape the enemy

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who feared our graceful lives
because we know that beauty

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cannot be captured
with words or jails.

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I hold nothing in my
hands except the lines

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that tell my fate.

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I long for the
comfort of my mother's

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stories, cooking,
anything, how she

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roasted mutton ribs, crispy and
salty, her stories of my Amazon

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grandmothers who claimed and
discarded husbands like ashes.

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Dust clouds billow
beneath my bare feet.

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The ground feels familiar,
and I walk easily

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on the sand that flows from
the mouth of the Canyon.

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A crow glides a new pattern
in the wake of grief's echoes.

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Thick black ants watch
Earth's surface child return.

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'Ah,' they say.

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'Leave this one alone.

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She is returning
from that place.'

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