Dale

The house is all lamp lit and warmed up with fire.
The new started furnace hums funny smells through the vents.
Mother and Mean-maw at the table slapping cards down,
obscure two handed games most friends can’t seem to learn.
She feels all the sticky marks, how the brush of wet wind
took up dried saliva, sweat and the seed,
gelled it to gesso, every stroke smeared her body,
changing her childhood, painting on a new face.
The heat and light press uncomfortable eyes and lungs
after walking through late fall, cold, dark, sodden mists.

Walls and windows are stretching, tilting off into shadows
at the edges her inability to focus or tell.
That this new her is pushing, spreading out from her center,
stomping her out to make her over again.
Around her, all around her, spins the drone of his voice chant
“ A woman now, woman now, awomanow now”.
Watch from so very far, while Mean-maw bitches up and down
about telephones, curfews and what are the rules?
That school busses are due, that things are to be done
in mornings that are never guaranteed anymore.

She can’t remain rooted, hunkered and hunching
cracking voice comes from somewhere shaped around lies.
The eye of the Mother stopped, shocking at strangeness',
introduced to the distances, then forgot they had met.
Subsequent receiving of foodstuff is the symbol
that agreeing and apologies are the safest of rituals.
With something sustaining finally filling her
the strong work of chewing releases some strain.
What’s left is familiar, the voices of women wash
over chattering, clattering, silver in sinks.