From an Author to Her Child
on writing
I have written a tome, a lexis
to define this vocabulary of pain,
and with the aged leather of my palms
I have bound the words and held them near,
as swaddled infants
in the darkness,
where comfort and clarity
are elusive.
Bent-backed silence
has borne witness to the gilt
that edges each page,
and the font has faded
from nights of restless fingering:
your lip at my breast,
the curve of an ear,
a lock of ebony.
But memories refuse to fade.
They seep, instead, like ink,
into the ridges of my fingertips
where text does grief no justice.
