mothers

I see her now, wearing her past like a cloak
stitched of secret shames,
fastened with hairspray and dusty perfume.

She cooked and laughed and never spoke of lovers jailed,
of village men shot in streets; those thoughts
kept ransom within a restless pantry

that was her company and her counsel. Her balcony
was the heavy peace of one long cloister –
darkened by confidences

just as voiceless as the sisters to whom my mother
would turn for guidance. So little sound was there,
cells and carpets thickened by a god with sleep in his eyes.

Everywhere, secret pacts.

She kept a canary in her foyer – a subterranean room,
cold and lightless but for a chill golden shimmer
that glowed from that little bird; a fissure,

a mute hall that held the surface tension,
kept by a yellow bird who fell stone cold from its perch
when we came too close to dangerous words,

words that shook the earth as she gave up her spirit, words
that stitched shut the veil, sealed the tombs;
words that rose and choked

                     like dead feathers burning.