On a pilgrimage with my brother
to pay
homage to our sister’s new child.
A path around the mountain, past tiered
adobe houses
dusted white, dusted tan,
dusted with powdered sugar and cocoa,
climb the right ladder to the white
hut, and there,
on a bed on stilts that rests on the
dusted floor,
she is.
My sister’s daughter.
Eyes oval and complex like a fly’s,
rainbow sheens across the countless facets of their lenses,
facets arrayed like tiles on a roof.
She’s big, too, and learns quickly.
It seems like a secret,
a bond, because I remember the
interminable wait
for my little brother to learn to speak,
but this one already understands.
Quick to learn,
and already trying to soften things for
other people.
Even if no one else can, I can see
that Fly already knows how to move out of the way,
to put the broom within my sister’s
reach.
It seems like a sweet, if sad, trait,
but my mother, Fly’s grandmother,
speaks.
Marked.
By her eyes, she’s marked.
I knew about that, but not about the
way Fly’s skin scars,
tender to the touch like a the skin of
flu patient.
Marked, but so what? I’m marked too.
But my mother the witch, the wise
woman --
she says it’s a sign of no good,
like Fly’s cleverness, too. She’s
a changeling.
And I can already see my sister fading
as she foresees that the child will get taken away.
I can see now why Fly tries so hard to
please even on this,
her second day of life.
I understand about being different,
about the cleverness you develop
in trying to pay off a guilt that
was never your birthright.
Whose guilt is it? And who will pay
for the loss of this one?
