...for me, anyway. I've been a writer for most of my life but this is the only thing I have ever written about my life in the Borg.
OUR HOUSE
Madness bloomed in our house after the day two women came asking;
“Have you heard The Good News of the Kingdom?”
Daddy began to wear a stiff suit and spout scripture,
a stern Jeremiah. Mama became nameless and never laughed again.
One day the roof collapsed and birds nested in our hair
but they paid no attention, believed it a message from God:
“Be vigilant, for the end is near!”
Every morning as rain blew across the kitchen table Daddy read
the Daily Text. We came to First Corinthians fifteen thirty-three:
“Bad associations spoil useful habits” so soon I had no friends
except cats and mice, conversed only with shadows, hoarded
forbidden songs and poems like stolen apples. I associated
with trees that wormed and branched their way through
cracked window panes. They kept my secrets.
The babies, when they came, were smelly cherubim,
when they didn’t come, were toilet bowls full of blood.
Lot had Carnal Knowledge of his daughters to get a son
but no need in our house since Mama lived to serve; though
once she threw Daddy’s books at The Elder and called
him a sonofabitch. The next day she crawled in from
a diaper-flapping wind to root and squeal among our shattered
dishes. She was a flawed brood sow. The hospital said she had
bad nerves. The Older Women said I should do more to help.
Helpless, I scratched code in sand that drifted over the linoleum,
cooked beans through cobwebs, swept broken glass; crept out
at night to scamper and dance under a lilac-scented moon. It was
the only time I sang. For guidance I wove a maze of strings
in a bedroom that had filled with papery darkness.
When they broke I tied them back. Hidden under the bed I braided
loose threads and fringes, chanted questioning mantras.
No answers, but I become filled with words that spill and burn.
When I left, the house came with me, carried on my back,
a compact tesseract unfolded at every stop; and I lived
in the rooms, cubes within dwindling cubes, until
entropy unscrolled us to the point at the end of a line.
The day Daddy died I bundled him in torn sheets
and stashed him in the root cellar, crying, assured him
I was yet a believer, reassured myself I was not.
Mama continues to wait for the earth to crack and swallow us.
I think it already did, but the moon still rises, and I sing
from this pit of broken timber.