She was raised to believe – and I believe –
the world began when she was born.

She has the Earth in her eyes.

Her body is her body despite the feeling some parts don’t belong.
But I see sonnets on her skin – the wonder keeping the stars apart –
and her laugh is this life-changing thing.

I am struggling stretching learning healing suffering growing,
with fault lines running through my bones.

But whatever happened to her, the girl with yellow hair –
the one beaten and bruised with something missing from her smile?

She now sells sanctuary like peaches on a summer day.
Hidden beneath 18,000 shadows – elms and oaks and mimosa petals –
so what went wrong when she was young?

She borrowed history,
rewriting the future in her own image,
a pendulum of joy and regret, incessant perpetually.

Where do I put her memory?