The day her mother thrashed her with owl
talons to instruct her in a child’s black liturgies,
you found her eating alone in the library stairwell,
silent the way an attic is emptied of every wind,
the sea of her gone to stone. At first you didn’t
notice her face blooming to poppies beneath gauze
like the repeated wreck a lark makes of a mirror.
Nor, once you had, could you convince her to let
the father in you summon the skies to bring wrath
on her house; to help the helpless meet fire with fire.
So, how it takes you back to see her as a woman,
leaves in her hair and tin arrows in her hand,
to blink back to a little girl on her knees pleading
with you to say nothing, that her mother is good;
and you, standing salt-pillar still, wondering how
a daughter among thorns could run these plains
with cosmos in her wake. But you scooped her up
and have carried her to this place, the rug the girl
stood on bent back to its born shape, like grass
after a doe rises from winter. Remember, in this burnt
freedom, how you said to her, all right, then gave her
a length of chalk so she could score this night for singing.