A Story for Our Daughters

I stood in front of my morning classes today, dumb as cheese. There aren't words. I can't comfort. I can't understand. What do we tell our children? How do we explain the man who hates? 

I can't grade or plan or propose. At one point, I heard myself reading André Breton's "Choose Life", I heard it like I was a pigeon on the windowsill outside myself. I don't know if I taught anyone anything.

I went back to my office and wrote. I sat in the dark and ate chocolate.

A Story for Our Daughters on Tuesday, November 9, 2016

When God saw

what he’d done,

the cancerous rib

in one hand,

his sleeping child

in the other,

he shaped us

from the squash

plant instead, braiding

vines and gold

blossoms into bones.

Then he made

us dream survival

was the only

gift he had

left to give.

All else was

claimed or taken,

he wasn’t clear,

still manic, dazed.

Then we woke,

my dear daughter,

all of us

in a borrowed

world, the salt

and rock and

spine of it.

The sky boiled

with comets building

someone else’s light.

Our partner was

terrified. He chattered

in the dirt

while we ran

our hands over

everything, my daughter,

thorns, teeth, words,

none of it

ours, the embers

and splinters, shards

of spilt creation.

The blood moved

through our hearts

like soldiers stamping

through a tunnel.

Nothing could kill

us, not even

love, not us.

This is it,

my daughter, survival

given to us

like territory, like

borders, like dust.