I love the wholeness of the old stories. Once,
there lived a husband and wife. Then the husband
up and died. Etc. In those days, we didn’t speak
certain words. In their place on the shelf, we put
something lovely. Honey-wise, we called the dark
shape sleeping in its cave. When a woman
disappeared, we buried her name in the middle
of the forest, and we buried the forest inside
a story, and we read the story to our sons,
and our sons grew up, and our sons laughed
and said, It’s just a story. Our sons’ favorite
story is the one about the bird that transforms
into a beautiful woman when a man shoots it.
Over the years, I replaced all my teeth
with iron, one by one. Now my tea tastes
of blood. My biscuits of bone. Our sons
stopped visiting. We saw them on the news,
giving their speeches, digging their trenches,
selling a sharper shovel. They hold out
their naked hands and say, What claws?
‍They smile and say, What teeth? I pour
honey on my bread. You’re overreacting,
‍my son says on the phone. I ask him,
Where is your wife? and he says, She flew
away. She’s sleeping. I didn’t do anything
wrong. Why are you like this? My silence
is darker than a hole in a forest at night.