Mea Andrews
I’M SORRY
My husband asks if this is
my first time seeing this
and it feels odd
to reassure him that it is not,
I have seen my mother beaten
and naked,
I have seen my father
hit his second wife
in the face
I’ve just never seen
a woman like a mountain,
taking hits to the face
with tears in her eyes
she seems to will
not to fall
as her cheeks turn
red and all around her
conversations continue
as though this woman doesn’t exist,
like she’s some twisted hallucination
my brain has created
while at dinner. My husband
tells me not to do anything,
and I remember
the video last week of
a group of men beating and
dragging off women from a similar
restaurant to this, in the same country,
their pleas for help
ignored, customers still coming
and going, stepping over the broken
beer bottles, squeezing past
a group of men
kicking a woman on the ground,
not making eye contact
as another is dragged
off somewhere screaming.
I want to superhero inject
myself into her life,
but my husband shakes his head,
and I remember my blood
type is rare here,
that my husband does
not have a green card in
my country,
that this fight could be deportation
and I weigh
my life
against this unknown
woman’s and
leave.
HIDDEN THOUGHTS
My husband craves
to look into the eyes
of a newborn, dreams
of pinching collagen
plumped cheeks, showing
his grandmother
the fruit of his loins,
teaching them basketball
and piano. I fear
the cries at night,
that they might
kill someone
or take pleasure
in peeling scales off
live fish. What I will
say when the Earth
rejects them, earthquakes
them down, burns
them out.
How do I explain
I don’t talk to my
mother, a growing
list of blocked
e-mail addresses,
an aversion to auburn
hair and a silent list
of questions about
speed balls, prolonged
hospital stays, and
an apartment with
all the metal missing.
I will have to teach
my husband’s joy
made real to always
lock the door behind
them, to go for the balls when
fighting a man, that
blood can rot families
like gangrene and it must
be cut off at the root,
in the heart, cauterized
with time. Teach them that new
life sometimes only grows
from scorched soil, ashes
carrying us further
than leaves withering
yellow, fruit too bitter
to eat.
