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IndigoEve
Member

since 2003-01-10

Posts 279
Etched in the illusion of time

0 posted 2004-11-07 07:50 AM

Helen hears her mother in the kitchen every morning at 7:35,
reading herself the Bible, and talking away her sins.
She paints her cuticles with cheap nail polish,
and picks through the cigarette containers,
counting how many it had been since yesterday -
her mother still smoked while reading herself the Bible,
and talking away her sins from another night before.
He had left early, touched Helen's head
too long,
more than the others.
And there lay his used woman,
still sleeping from the late evening;
Helen always pretended to do the same,
and saw how he paused
longer than the others
and threw money upon Mama's unconscious form.
In a few hours, she would be roused by what could only be
the black God's hand,
but Helen awoke sooner (always) to allow space for wondering
if these nocturnal men knew what secrets she held:
That her mother would weep,
and the bruises stretch painfully across her rouge-stained fingers
as she clawed at her face in shame -
though not before reading herself the Bible, word for word,
and talking away her sins to the stale morning air.

If I were to touch you, would you bleed a velvet river, running miracles through the sodden ground? --Moi

Marge Tindal