My One.

My arms aren't very willowy anymore,
and my hair is split and gray,
but each morning
I count my scars
before they fade
and look to see
if you're awake.

It was worth every bit.

If, when you're feeling all alone,
you reach out,
just far enough to grab hold
of something soft and comfortable,
I hope you can tell
it was always there
for you.

A Wolf's Milk.

There is great pity to be had
for those who go without
the love of their mothers,
who root themselves
so deeply into an Earth
that offers no fruit
to her children,
and who laugh so sadly
like wilting moths,
burnt by the open flames
of which they hope to gather warmth from.

She is cowering with her snarl,
so sickly and trampled,
never taught to feel
anything except for the weight
of survival.

But she is drowning her cub
in bitter licking

and strong stillness.

The strain of having gone
her whole life
without knowing the taste
of her mother's milk
is one that will never be eased.

Blisters.

"You can learn to get used to anything,"
she told me as she shaved off all my hair.
I remember her fingers were thick and rough,
like they had been taught how to fight.
Then she brusquely patted my shoulder,
clad all in khacki-colored cotton,
and called for the next girl in line,
who was waiting with her hands
clasped behind her back,
as she was supposed to.

That first night,
after meeting all the

wailing, waiting, and hurt
for the very first time,
I cried harder than I knew I could,
as quietly as a mouse,
and fell into an uneasy sleep
on the top bunk.

A few days later,
we all had to line up with our faces to the wall,
and pull down our bottoms,
just a little bit,
and try not to wince
while people we'd never met
poked us and rubbed us
like we were old meat,
trying desperately to get sold.
And then they sized up our feet,
and handed us two pairs of sand boots,
spanked our sore bottoms,
and told us to run along now,
hoo-ah.

Well, after all that,
we were deemed quarantined,
and sent out to sweep up the halls,
they gave us old rifles,
and two-quart water jugs,
that were tied up with jute,
and told us we'd need to hydrate.
Then we learned how to sleep soundly
outside, with june bugs and toads and beetles
all creaking like floorboards everywhere around us,
how to listen for foes
crawling out of the dark,
how to tell a hoof from a sole,
and how to paint our faces without brushes
or mirrors or paint.

After nine weeks in the Southern sun,
and fourteen kilometers of kevlar,
my face would never look the same.
My chin had been rubbed raw,
my skin, once olive-green and hopeful,
was now scarred with haste and worry.

I haven't much to show for it all,
except a boxful of sad letters
and a green duffel-bag stuffed to the brim,
with proof of who I used to be.

Learning to Scream.

There's a fire in the air
that calls for a toast,
and you're always the first to stand.
A medley of lessons
surround your head,
like the crown of a well-read man.

Slowly, you're learning to scream.

There's a strength in your neck
that is new here today,
and I wonder how you came to find,
that the pieces of life
are so nice to dissect,
disassemble, undo, and unwind,

Slowly, you're learning to scream.

Your head is so big
with words you don't know
and your tongue is aglow with the taste
of something besides
the milk of your past,
as you eat the whole world up in haste.

Slowly, you're learning to scream.

The Way You Swallow.

In the way that you speak,
I hear something;
There's a secret,
wrapped up tight with cherry-colored twist,
lying at the bottom of your windpipe...
and it's screaming for me
to reach in
and grab it,
pick it up,
pluck it out of the darkness
that is inside you.

It wants to whisper in my ear
little tales of what it has seen you swallow.
It wants to chirp on my shoulder
little songs about the way you digest
the bites of life...
although it may not have
a whole lot to tell.

You've always been a nibbler.

Loveless.

He was a thick resolve,
quickened breath,
stale, closed, controlling.
She was like an empty vessel,
her voice whispering,
"Fill me."
"Make me whole again."

And so he did.

Our Spring-Time Romance.

I was three years your senior,
it showed in your skin
and in your wide, wide eyes,
and the way you would scowl at my cigarettes.
You picked me flowers
on balmy springs nights.
We drove to the skies
and sat together, like little birds.

Lying naked in our cold campsite,
the whole world floated by.
I chopped wood.
You sang to me in Arabic;
ya 'assal, ya amar, roohi, wa eini.

Sweetheart,
honey,
darling.
Give me all of you, I begged.

I'm sorry I broke apart and crumbled,
after that stagnant phone call,
when I started wearing steel-toed boots.
You, still warm from the Kuwaiti sun,
hoping against hope that all of these dreams
we scrawled in loving haste
in sad, wrinkled letters to oneanother
would actually happen.

Regardless of how late
my mouth met yours,
I thought you should know,
I do remember.

For Nana.

I can remember warm afternoons in your lap, slouched and running my little fingers against green, plastic pearls. You were always smiling. And the taste of flavored juice that came in barrel-shaped containers, blue juice, orange, red. I can still see the blank faces of the dainty geisha that stood proudly along dusty shelves. Wrapped in silk kimonos, paint peeling, flaking to dust.

I can still smell your perfume. I smell you all the time, did especially often when I was pregnant, needed a little kiss. And I can still remember the beautiful jewelry box lying on your vanity, and how it felt to sink my hands into the puddles of color, hard and glittering. I remember your long, shaky hands, brown with age, though they were so strong and always warm. I remember white lace curtains, ear infections, playing Yahtzee before a modest supper of macaroni. I remember your hair all in curls, and your lemon yellow slacks.

And then you began talking to the ceiling, listening to menacing voices that lived in your own head, spoke of rape and murder. I remember the nursing home we brought you to, and your fat, gleeful room-mate. Her insides burst and the whites of her eyes became yellow with the piss that floated around inside of her. I remember playing the flute for you for Christmas and the stale smell of urine. We were losing you.

I remember waking up to the telephone ringing, the message machine picking up, and a quiet nurse apologizing for the bad news. You went in your sleep. I couldn't drag myself out of bed for a week. I was twelve.

The pain never got any better.

But I can feel you with me, can smell your soft perfume, hear your raspy laugh. I felt you like never before the nine months I carried my first son, and the murky months following. You spoke to me in my sleep, kept a hand firmly over the sharpest of corners, sang praises and nursed me back to life.

I know you know it's okay.
We still love you bigger than the sky, Nana.