From the screened porch she watches the setting sun,
hears the black-shoed footfall of her grandmother
in the kitchen. Outside voices returning from a beach
day – a perfect beach day. She lies on the sofa,
exhales to resist the insistent throb of the wound,
longs to sleep under a strawberry moon.
The wall opposite is striped with light of the moon.
Shutter slats angled to deny a bleaching sun,
direct the day’s heat and light upon the wound.
She repositions her head in the lap of her grandmother,
sun-burned back bristling against the nap of the sofa.
Tomorrow’s rain will raise boats and sink hopes for the beach.
Immobile, she plumps her belly as a whale on the beach,
exhales (resist!) and inspects her thumb’s half-moon,
glances at her bandaged foot propped on the arm of the sofa.
Faded photos on the wall, unknown uncles, sisters, mother, son.
early faces, tattered times and places of her grandmother
clans of others, lost inside her never-healing wound.
A trove of broken beer glass carved the girl’s wound
Revlon-red toenails circling pools of blood-red beach.
Lifted, life–guarded home like a tottering grandmother
who, once, young, balanced life and death beneath the moon,
who covered hollowed blinking eyes too soon exposed to sun,
who now brings soup and watches soap operas from her sofa,
who hums unknown tunes to make a bed of the sofa
for this child of her child, this balm for her wound,
a sometimes solace from the memory of the sun-
drenched day, waiting in the bay, turned away from the beach
floating in the night, wrenched from the light of a hunter’s moon
to be chosen by the child of her child to be grandmother.
How many languages, how many tongues of the grandmothers.
What ships have they sailed to reach their scratchy sofa?
Hum me your histories by the light of a silvery moon.
Our bonds remain beyond my scar and your scarless wound.
Our bonds remain with those who look beyond or toward a beach
who may one day be inside, safely striped in light from moon and sun.
The rose moon rises full, repairs its slivered wound.
Her grandmother lays a nodding head to rest on the sofa.
She finds her beach sandals, limps quietly, awaits the rising sun.
A sestina Inspired by Kim Noriega and Sestina by Elizabeth Bishop