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Sketches of a Little Girl's Life
We came from redemption, trees and voices
Daddy’s car at night bringing us home
salty sweat and tears in palms
all childhood’s autumns asparkle
radiant, iridescent, crimson leaves
riding on each other’s shoulders in our mismatched clothes.
We dreamed about the stars, falling into the sun feet first,
old houses, and tornadoes;
in daytime, broken bikes and tattered sheets,
and when we were sick, sweet red medicine.
One day the mechanical ball
stopped singing
rolled straight down the heating vent
where hands never reach
undisturbed.
Three trees deep your family lies
see what you thought you buried behind you—
here are the roots that held you up
here are the leaves above your head
changing once again
and here are the veins that once fed them light.
They’re bound for their waters, sloping downhill
they’re a different shape now
changed from the tree you used to know.
Here is the tree’s seed, deep in the crater
breaking once again.
Strange and pulsating life
appears before my tree-ghost eyes
it whispers in the vines of silence.
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