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19-19
The
game went into overtime that night. The moon didn't
Stay to witness, having other places to be. On top
Of Mount Thoradour she couldn't wait
To lose her virginity. This was before the war.
Before he would leave her
Pregnant
with Sierra, alone, before he returned,
His left arm's ghost dangling from his side like a medal.
He was lucky, he'd tell her, her hair
Against his bruised cheek. The scent of her
Like
orange groves for the first time again. This
Was before the dance where her little sister, who scored
The tying points in the game that night would break
Her ankle while dancing with George Thyman,
Her curious white bone pushing through the skin
Of
this world before being forced back,
Sewn tight under the ivory-dry cast.
But this was before color. The black and white
The newspaper took still hangs on their father's wall.
Whenever Sierra sees the picture: her aunt's
Long
caterpillar body balancing up toward the basket,
She remembers her mother pointing to the photograph saying
This was the night when the door to my womb unlocked.
When they married for Sierra, her sister came
On crutches with George Thyman. This was before
The
last witch trial had taken place. In dense forests
Skirts still fanned cautiously around dark fires.
And this was before the reunion, before Sierra's
Mom would pull her blue Ford over to the side of the road
To wait out the storm. It was before the police would
find her car
The
next morning, empty, blood still wet on the steering wheel's
rim,
Black windshield wipers broken, lying in the back seat.
This was when murder first entered the town of Pulaski.
The newspaper ran a story on the accident: Sierra's face
In color on the cover next to a reprint of her missing
mother.
This
was before the picture of her aunt that night on the basketball
court
Would fade. That night on the court, ball rising from
the arch of her
Fingers, circling the rim of the basket, wavering,
Then falling in, the whole world
Seemed right-she will remember this feeling
When she buries the ghost of her sister's body in an empty
casket.
She
will remember this as she buries her face
In her brother-in-law's empty sleeve, her niece embracing
The idea of the basketball
That made everything possible, everything feel
Secure. The way it fell through the chute, guided
By holes in the net. This was before the casket hit the
ground.
This was before the war.
Artery
What
will they find when they cut you open?
Who will be there when they take back your ribs
and press onward to your heart? Will they see me
kneeling at the edge of your slow-flowing river
of
blood? Will there be earlier versions of you?
Of us floating by in a rowboat drawing
moonlight? Will they see your mother or your father
or how you imagined they could have been?
Will they be able to see the face of your own
child? Or will they have to cut me open for that?
What
if there are stars in your veins? Or goldfish?
Or gold? Will they choose to keep hidden those things
you hide too well? How can they tell?
What
if, in a quest for your heart, they find
no heart? Find that someone had already been there
and stolen it? What if it is there and they open it and
they see
another heart inside? What if they cut that heart
and find another heart inside that one? What if the hearts
we carry
belong to someone else? Would you want yours back?
What if they told you, after they were done,
upon
your waking, that your heart is not a heart
but a star, pulsing and ready to fall? And that pieces
of hearts
have been falling like meteors into other hearts
this entire time? Would your heart be cratered like the
moon?
Or smooth like a tumbled stone? What if
your
heart is a planet on which when you look
closely you can see faces and reaching hands?
Have I told you, when it is quiet, to the beat
of your body, I hear my own voice singing?
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