Forever Hold Her Peace

inspired by "Roselily" by Alice Walker

Someone has painted smog across the sky

And made her hands soft–

No more sewing needles or thorny flowers

From her father’s yard, bright and almost pungent

With the smell of an ending summer. 

Instead, she holds bottles.

His large hands. Their tiny ones. 

Sometimes she forgets to worry 

About anyone else.

Not even the people who sat on the sunny grass

And watched her bind herself

To him, a new her

That they had never met. 

A young woman, in a veil.

They are of a different world.

They don’t understand

The god her children will soon pray to,

Small mouths wrapping around strange words. 

She wants to shut their lips,

She wants to shut her own. She wants

To return, but she knows the smoke

Rising at the edges of the skyline

And the sturdiness in his swallowing eyes

Have sealed her here.

Where she is loved, she is told.

Where she is safe, she is told. 

So she lets him paint a smile across her face

And smog across the sky.