for Rose
I am whole. I tap my elbows. Ethics is slow
She got off the bus at dusk
outside the child prison
Turned her back on the cages
Followed the bats
The revolutionary girls compacted, herded with slurs behind her.
I hold myself.
My mother at my back,
My overnight baggage, my backpack.
She came into the forest with open hands, with no data and no contacts
The pine needles hung like rusty whisks
A knife in the cinch in her belt.
The soggy bread splashed
against the cell wall
like milk from a raped cow
empties into the empty dirt, beyond the pail,
the urge to laugh when crying.
She points out black butterflies
And blue moods at the mother tree
She said, this is the only place I can be me,
I could never abandon the dancing caterpillar.
She asked me to straddle, stay.
The concrete lamp shot out with a slingshot.
The creek runs rash.
Ethics is harm reduction. On the way home, it’s true:
I can’t. I don’t have enough love to feed you all.
This makes me whole. And rewilding.
cdzhouse 