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 youngs 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 where

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my mother wove her last blanket.

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I've walked this empty
road before in 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 relatives, and to
trade with our neighbors who

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live on the high windy mesas.

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I am 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
survive to escape the enemy who

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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.

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How she roasted mutton
ribs, crispy and salty.

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Stories of my Amazon
grandmothers who claimed

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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-Surface child return.

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"Ahhh," they say.

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"leave this one alone, she is
returning from that place."

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