Member-only story
If someone could just get past the guards,
someone with a friend who’s friends with them,
someone with a jingling ring of keys,
with the combination, the codes,
the right password, the right palm print
pressed onto the scanner
of my security system,
unlocking the gates that swing wide
onto the small crying girl, the one
who’s been there, confined, resigned
to a dense, solitary silence…
If someone could just help me get to her,
perhaps,
like the sky coaxed open
by a people dancing and singing its name,
in its own language, in their language,
grief would release itself on my days,
and tears would pelt the crusted plains,
settling all the dust, seeping
deep into the soil of my sickness,
cooling fevers, slaking thirst,
staining cement with that delicious dark
imprint of a drenching that inevitably
brings the ice cream truck.
