Siblings

i hear you humming
in the corners of our home

small voice
suspended in secrets

you are looking at her
while you sing

your eyes turning up at the sides
like you two know something

no one else does
the blue of them bluer

I wonder were they always
so deep

were they always
so blue

she is transfixed
ears standing on end

face pressing against
the small song

that you wrap
like a vow around her

does she listen
because you see her

does understanding suddenly
open in her eyes

a hidden flower
found by sun

when she realizes
she is among her own kind

Genocide

someday you will look at your arms
and see that they are not my arms
you will follow the trail of skin down
past brown wrists and pale palms
you will see your fingers
digging the open air like roots
and I will wonder

when you pick up a spade
and begin to turn the earth
what to speak of soil
that is bruised and black with blood,
the loose limbs of your sisters
folded in unanswered prayer

someday you will look at your eyes
and see that they are not my eyes
but are the eyes of the dead
you will dig into the iris,
salt springing from dry ducts
you will wonder

as your vision blurs
who the brown belongs to
who among you lives

Mary

2 Corinthians 5:17
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.

Last night I watched my foster sister take her last breath of air and leave this world.

Three days ago Mary was taken to the ER after having 16 seizures. The doctors discovered that a fierce infection had entered her bloodstream, making recovery unlikely. Yesterday I received the call that any loved ones should make their way to the hospital immediately: Mary was expected to live through only a few more hours.

On the hour long drive into the hospital I thanked God for the chance to say goodbye to Mary. To tell her that I love her and I’m sorry for the things I did wrong. To hold her hand and walk with her to the end of this life. Losing a loved one is always tragic and hard, yet for Mary, leaving this life and entering the next holds something extra-precious. You see, Mary was a beautiful girl trapped in a broken body and a broken mind. She lived out her 29 years mentally and physically handicapped. She never got to experience many things we take for granted: walking, running, dancing, talking, being heard, being understood, understanding, independence.

Mary died slowly. For hours she would take a breath only every minute, and then every two minutes. Still, it seemed so peaceful. The longer time passed the less she struggled. There was a peace in the room in the final hours. When she opened her eyes there was no fear. I remember looking into them and thinking that she had never looked at me with such intention, like she was more present than ever, like she was accepting our comfort, being washed in love.

My favorite memory of Mary is her sitting in her wheelchair in the summer shade at moms house. How many times I watched her, long black hair glossed with sun, quiet face lifted toward the sky. If I ever had wondered if Mary spoke with God, I knew in those moments that she did. She knew His love. Of that I am certain.

Today when I woke I felt sadness and loneliness wash over me. I wondered about Mary. I tried to see her in my mind. I wish there was a window with which to peek through and watch. In the midst of this heartache and guilt and sadness, through the sorrow and longing there is joy. Yesterday Mary was an orphan. She was a stranger to most of humanity. She was misunderstood. She was invisible to most, even myself at times. She was trapped and helpless and bound. Today Mary has legs to stand on. She has met the one person who has always loved her perfectly and as she was. She has been embraced by the God who fashioned and formed her. She can speak, she can sing, she can dance, she can bend and unbend, she can think clearly, she can be Mary unrestrained. She is more free and whole than I can ever imagine.

Oh, Mary. We love you. We miss you. We can't wait to meet the new you.

In 2006 - This was my very first published poem:
For Mary

you are beautiful somewhere
and you know it's close
on the tip and trapped
like a word
that won't push
from the tongue
drawn nigh and left to fill
the beacon mouth with silent
arcane thoughts
which you roll, like poppy seeds
in the loll of your mind
set them to germinate
in numinous folds the soul
of someone lovely
who is green
who is growing a garden

Praise

for your body,
the body
of my daughter’s
mother, praise for

hands pressed against
the stretched canvas
of skin, praise any song
clung to your lips,

the echo of your voice
wrapped round the deep
seed of your body,
which she dimly heard

through the salty swell,
a small stone tumbled smooth,
tonal waves turning her
in the tide of your breath.

praise for the blood
of your body and beat of blood
and the crimson
vein of nourishment,

for your DNA, the code
I will spend my life observing
in the twist of curl,
in the well of her eyes, praise

for beginnings,
the life she will unfold and wear,
your eyes looking forward,
your hand falling at her side.

Beginnings

Gideon constantly talks about his 'fishter'. (Sister) Today I heard him instructing his little brother, "Maddox, no hitting baby fishter. Baby fishter is a girl like mommy. No hitting. O.K. Maddox?" He proceeded to tell his little-wide eyed pupil how babies grow in the tummies of mommies. I, once again, sat down and explained that baby Jubilee is not growing in my tummy but in my heart and that someday soon I get to fly in a big airplane to get her. That perked their interest and they started zooming around the kitchen crashing their planes into each other.

A little later in the afternoon I found Gideon in the library looking at the pictures from his birth. I could just see the wheels in his mind grinding away. His four-year-old mind is trying to wrap around birth, beginnings, adoption. Big topics for such a little guy. I wrote a poem about his discoveries. It's still a work in progress but I thought I'd post what I have. I am calling it 'Beginnings.'


You have just learned
that you started out smaller

and smaller still
than your stuffed up bear.

Small as a crack
in a sun-soaked seed.

You look at my belly,
run your fingers along the pock

of stretch marks,
the fault lines,

displaced surface breaking
like rocks in your hand.

We look at pictures,
the aftermath of battle.

You are bloodied and puffed up,
stretched like a long vowel,

your mouth fumbling with sound,
limbs free falling through thin air,

the nurse holding a light to you eye,
retina retracting in terror,

cord coiled on your abdomen,
ready to snap it’s head, strike.

You ask me if it hurt worse
than a bee sting

you already know, the whites of your eyes
bloated and bogging in their sockets,

grip tightening around the album,
knuckles paled and clamped like a locked jaw.

All day you carry the book
as a badge on your arm.

When I enter your room that night,
after the sun has conceded to shadows,

blonde hair spills over the
photos, moonlight over trenches,

the line of your face is brazen
and unyielding:

a soldier poised
for war.

Waiting For My Adopted Daughter

I.

` ‘The moment a child is born,
the mother is also born.
She never existed before.
The woman existed, but the mother, never.
A mother is something absolutely new.’
Rajneesh

If I am new
as the next breath
or beat of blood,
if I am standing on the precipice,
toes curled around the edges,
flesh pricked and crawling
the ream of wind,
if I press against a
fetid shell, the cracked casing
that has been my home,
if I shrug it off and
abandon it, if I never look back
on my life as it were,
will you come

speak to her body in low tones,
ask her to open as my arms,
that are heavy with weighted air,
would she give her body up,
stretched, swollen temple of my child,
press you, a flattened flower
from the bed of her belly,
wash you with the slick salt of tears, would she
release you to the world,
a new song who clings
to my lips, and then lifts,
gently in prayer.

II.
‘The moment a child is born,
the mother is also born.
She never existed before.
The woman existed, but the mother, never.
A mother is something absolutely new.’
Rajneesh

to picture her as an orphan
folded into a corner of the home
of hope, where children are gumming the lead
from painted cribs, padding shoeless through halls

like thoughts that are born and then slip,
as if they had never existed,
through narrow slots in the mind.
to see you,

with your beautiful, round bloom,
pushed out like an Aster Moon,
smooth black skin stretched
and floating, like lilies, on the lake of womb.

I feel as the other, the anti-, the crawl
of fear across the ribs before a stranger
appears in shadow. A thief with small
hands that are always swiftly signing

even after you have lain down and shaken
the house with your screams.
your eyes darting like a cornered animal,
skin glossed and dripping,

breath caged in the drum of your chest,
the bearing down of,
the moment when finally
the body opens and empties.

you will see her, this creature that is you
and is your body, and is new as the hollowed
case of your body, and you will say to her,
how can I ever give my body away?

Rwandan Daughter

before small lungs swelled
with warm vanilla air
before the flutter of thin eyelids

and the waking of a soul
before the cord and root
and toes uncurling from feet

unfolding from limbs
tucked under a girl
in a shadow world of cells combining, dividing

before the xx chromosome
before her father
before her mother

in the underbrush of a heart
where hope grows in wildflowers
over the rugged expanse

of dreams and dares
in the place where God whispers
you were born

i wrapped you in the colors
of your country
held you to the drum of my heart

promised that someday i would find
you tucked in the folds of time
waiting to settle

the landscape
of open
empty arms