Framed in Broken Glass

From the shards of broken glass
she drew pieces
sorting them by color, texture, shape, whether it had a dark line in it or not
whatever at the moment seemed to make sense
in a world and space and time that did not.
The world had ... trembled, rocked and shaken
it had ROARED!
Then, still shouting, it broke into pieces and dissolved into
bits of wood and plaster, dishes and fabric
clothes and shoes and furniture
rock and earth and grass and flowers
even the tree with its broad trunk and thick branches
so high up and green
green
green
leaves that shone silver underneath ...
it had fled past her, carried within sheets of water.
Sand and dust and dirt filled the air
her nose
and her eyes, and the sound
filled her ears.

She had hid.

When it was quiet again
when the world outside felt still
and the air smelled less clogged,
she had come out to find these glass pieces
everywhere
jagged, scattered on a white pine floor,
the kind her grandfather had made for the floor upstairs at his house
and sanded and sanded until it was smooth
but this one was yet unvarnished.
She could feel the grain.

The floor met a plaster wall at its edge, which was cool to the touch and
damp purple flowers walked within a green vine
along the edge that that traveled the floor to the wall
with the big window that looked out over the river
the rest of the wall was untouched and rough,
and there was smaller window without a frame that faced west
through which sunlight poured like rain driven by the wind, slanted
and spread like honey across the floor,
warm,
spilling over the glass, tempting, challenging her
to make sense of it all.

The odd clod of earth and grass at the edges of her eyesight pulled her eyes
to the south
in the foreground she glimpsed
a dandelion here
a robin's egg there, crushed
a string of cupped ivory flowers over there,
disembodied from its leaves and roots
the petals' edges still curled back like lace.

In the place where the big window should have been
the river flowed higher and heavy with branches and leaves and broken
things shining red-orange with the setting sun, it looked aflame
their pier had come loose and was tangled with others
clunking together and bobbing up and down when something big swept into them
it was all so close,
too close! She closed her eyes for a moment.
They burned.

She opened them again and keeping her view closer in saw the back porch
empty of picnic chairs and table,
her little coca-cola machine, which had sat on the edge of the picnic table
was gone too
a branch from had split from her swing tree
torn from the tree as though paper,
split like two bones of a wishbone …
no,
more like fabric torn against the weave, uneven
jagged,
shredded
and had crashed inside
her eyes following the branch to its near end,
inside
inside the big window, the big window gone
It had broken the dining table with its weight,
upending the chairs and scattering them
except for her dad's chair, in which the tire swing sat
the smaller branches and stems still wore leaves
she used to reach for them with her feet, asking daddy
to swing her high, higher!
giggling, she grasped at them, sometimes touching them with the tips of her shoes
or toes ….
they were limp now, the leaves
crumpled
she touched them with her fingertips.
The side door to the outside, which faced west, was broken and crooked, too
how it stood, a mystery
for where the wall should have been, there was nothingness.

Turning again to the glass pieces
on the floor. The sun angled now, she paused a moment
maybe more …
what is age and the passing of time to the psyche,
the soul,
memory?

She solved the puzzle and left it there:
the angry one
and the happy one
somehow building the survivor
cauterizing her from the past
protecting her from the present
steeling her against the future.

A lifetime later, she found the stained glass picture that had hung on the wall
that had hung on the wall in that room
in that room which had been destroyed
no …
in that room with the unvarnished floor
with the sanded, unvarnished floor
and the plastered wall
the plastered wall with frescoed edging of violets and green vine
and a frameless window …
through which the sun had poured
strong and slow and certain after the malestrom
after the malestrom
after the malestrom that had changed
after the malestrom that had changed …
everything.

A lifetime later, she found the stained glass picture that had hung on the wall
in that sun-drenched room around which all else had been destroyed—
the sun-drenched room with the frameless window, the
violet and green fresco-edged plaster wall, and the
sanded, unfinished floor.

The pieces had been glued together and reframed. Turning it over,
she read the inscription, which had been taped to the frame as her
grandmother, her great-aunt, and her great-grandmother had done
with everything they saved.
She recognized her mother's handwriting too
"on the day of destruction, 1951"—long before she had been born!

The breath she drew in sharply carried to her
the smell of dust and dirt and plaster,
the taste of time and falsehood.

The structural breaks imposed so long ago had been rendered, scored into
the heart and mind as well.
She understood then that the source of her unknowing had been deliberate,
intentioned and stolen from her by the same as had stolen it from her mother
and her mother's mother
and her mother's mother's sister
and her mother's mother's mother.

She did not know if it was an evil of which her grandfather knew,
but that hope, born of the desparate need to place him among the innocent,
could not be allowed to mute her.
One could never truly know with these injuries
there were so many secrets and so much pain and such a deep and fierce will to forget
making us strangers to our own biologies, our own bodies, our own truths
histories, bloodlines ...
to our own selves, our own instinct.

What evil is this!
that undoes not only the keeping of safe places but of how they are built?
that reduces the ancient wisdom of plant and earth and water to mere mimcry?
That disrupts the minds of the mothers, daughters, cousins and sisters
and undoes our women's ancient memory
the knowledge of untold times
of strength
of ourselves
of the ability to cherish and teach one another?
Instead, it teaches us that we ourselves are the problem
and we are to be ignored, feared, medicated ... ??

I ROAR WITH THE PAIN OF WOMEN!

I am infuriated, angry, cheated and lost
not just for the undoing of my inheritance of these essential truths
and of that inheritance of my sisters and cousins
but also in the undoing of my mother
and her mother
her mother's sister
her mother's mother.

I know nothing and I grieve.
And yet I have survived, as did she.

We survive, yes, but we must learn to thrive.

Woe to you who have done this, are doing it still.
We will learn to thrive,
I will learn to thrive
and when I do and we do,
I and we will teach others.

5/12/2020
edited 6/23/2020