A barren tree stands tall and strong across the street. I see it weekly on days I volunteer. It’s naked limbs waving on windy days. High up, in the crux where two branches meet, sits a large, empty nest. Too large for small Avian visitors. Not a home for sparrows or finches, surely. Built by crows or grackles or large jays, perhaps-- The nest sits, stable and empty, as if a child took a large dark brown Sharpie and drew a circular blob when asked to draw a bird’s nest on a page featuring an outline of a tree.
Its emptiness captures me. Mirrors me. It stood, providing shelter for the young growing there. Now, abandoned by the young it once sheltered, the adult birds, no longer of use, have abandoned it as well-- Each having traveled on their way. Yet the nest survives-- Empty, except for the glue of memory attaching it to the tree-- As I am emptied of the young I once sheltered.
The words, the words-- They rattle in my head, louder than the tail of a snake, louder than the breaking of stacked billiard balls, louder than the concussing jack hammer on a city street-- too much noise to hear distinctly what must be written, what must be said, screamed into the foul fiery smoke-filled air
One word, one. Just one, larger than the others, louder— settles against my skin, a lash of fiery noise, burning, burning deep-- betrayal-- burning away tiny scars of other betrayals a lifetime ago
This wildfire of betrayal burns away soul held beliefs of common good.
It has begun. They will come for us tonight. Darkness their friend. The cloak of night hides their evil, so they believe. We know they will place us in one of the camps. We are of no use to them. Old dissenters of questionable things, the light which frightens them. We fought long and hard, each in her own way.
Now, it is time for you, all my daughters, to stop. Your survival is the only way we win. Survive. Do not give up. Fight now by surviving. If you do not survive, there is no hope for a future.
I beseech you all to remember: Use only the last name I paid to have bleached for you. Pretend to forget your heritage now, for if pride lets you not pretend, you will not survive, and your heritage dies with you. Wear the gold cross on the gold chain as proof you believe as they do. Learn and recite their prayers, for God does not care. Cover your skin in the sun, it cannot turn too dark. Pass for them if you at all can. If you cannot, lower your eyes and hide defiance within the coverage of pretend obedience. Bite your tongue silent so you may make your way forward. Though I cannot travel with you (I will not live long enough to see the return), above all, remember all roads lead to Delaware.
Yet, I will be there with you when you arrive and breathe in freedom.
Hidden behind two different sized levels, I saw it.
And the ache of my bones reared up — electric, sharp edged-- I shrank in the ugly face of its brutality.
Yes, I admit— I shrank down 50 years or so more or less— a thirteen-year-old, helpless, swimming in a stuttering stupor, nose barely above water, in the wake of this awakened ache in my bones-- the sight of a metal yardstick like the one my drunken mother tried to break over my back as she had her wooden one.
And I, after all these years, I still carry that ache, hidden, in the marrow of my bones
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Hearing The Mermaids Sing 