Poetry in Motion

Tiny Hands

 When I was a child my mother had the

dancing water color wings of Eset, and

my father the glittering eyes of Horus.

My mother would fly away on her

watercolor wings every Thursday at three

and I never knew where she went. But when

She got home I could see creatures in the

shadows under her eyes. When I was a

child my 12 year old sister would make macaroni

and cheese every Thursday at three and I

swear she held never land in her life lines.

When I was a child my ten year old

sister and I used go around the yard and bury the

All the dead bees. We would spend hours finger

painting headstones and writing tiny eulogies

with our tiny hands. Death was merely a technicolor

rainbow and we were the sun, shining through

our graveyard of prisms. Children seem to be

the only ones to notice just how many little red

monsters can fit in the emptiness of their grandfathers

iris. When I was a child I lived in a cloud of cigarette

smoke and liquid adrenaline. I never could breath

very well. When I was a child I was the only one one

Who seemed to notice the way my uncle whispered to the trees,

I loved it when they whispered back. When I was a

child my grandfather used to play with me and

my sisters on the big fur rug in his living room,

I never really liked fur rugs. When I was a child

I would sit and watch the shapes in my grandmother's

wallpaper Waltz with each other, green, blue round

and round. Children know the difference between black

and empty, black is the gnashing monsters that circle

around the outskirts of nightlights, waiting for the

Perfect opportunity to invade. But empty,

empty is the kind of black on the barrel of the gun that marches

round house every night

checking the windows, locks, and doors. Entering the

nursery. When I was a child I could see goblins in the

lines on my father's forehead, and a battle raging

underneath. They said I had dimples in my cheeks and

sunbeams in my hair and lines around my eyes.

They said I had fairies in my ears and heart beats

in my nail beds and lines around my eyes. When I

was a child I had little girl hands and little girl feet

and little girl cheeks but my little girl eyes had not

belonged to little girls for a very long time.