When I was a girl, the worst thing I could imagine was being alone
yet, here I am, sweeping through each day without benevolent counsel
and making it—
waking up to find these people are my people, unaided
and I haven’t an ear to bend when I am unsure or afraid.
I climbed that palm as a girl, at the end of our drive and watched—
branches frail beneath my muddled frame, overlooking
our little gray house, jalousie windows seeping secrets;
mother asleep inside, in broad daylight
because mothers do this, I think—
sleep away the day because the night whispers villainous things
to them. Maybe she spent all night watching my cot, but I knew
that wasn’t true because the night whispered to me, too—
I saw stars in the night that flashed signals at me
a girl, aghast at the thought of being alone without realizing
she was very alone already.
When children speak to me, I must silence my mind and listen
in a way that no one did for me—
so they don’t go on believing that the worst thing is singularity
when the worst thing is that child’s mind unmindfully in a tree.
Photo Credit: iainmerchant Flickr via Compfight cc
