Someone Else's Daughter

Fair warning:  this is not my happiest post.


I looked through pictures of someone else's daughter.

I know that I know what I know.


I may not know specifics but I know trouble.
I know little girls with ancient eyes.

I just don't know why.

Why is it easier to see someone else's daughter?
Why do we neglect to teach and protect our own?

...

When I was a little girl, I met Sharon Doubiago once* and I remember two things about the encounter.  One, she gave me a little tin of lip balm that she'd picked up while hitchhiking across the country.  Two, when I looked at her, I could really only see the light that seemed to radiate from her hair.  I thought she was some kind of strange hippie angel bringing me gifts and encouragement that I would always remember.  She was traveling with her daughter then and storing words that she would later record and that are still probably too grand for me to grasp.

But I know that she knows what she knows.

In the earliest story
Isis is condemned to pregnancy,
to give birth in no time, no place

You wait for me to speak
My throat turns to stone

I want to say what all mothers
want to say to their daughters.
What all mothers must say
to their daughters.

but are unable.
Why can't we speak?

Why do mothers betray their daughters
and thus themselves
all of life
the earth and all of time
the past and the future?

I am making the same betrayal
as my mother made of me
even now, though I have come this far with you
though you have come this far with me
though we have come this far together

though I have been thinking on this moment all your life
though you have waited all your life
though we know our necessary evolution

though you are raped, kidnapped,
though I hear you screaming

In you the secret turns to seed
In me, to stone.

But why?

Why this cycle with our own daughters?

I believe and claim His promise,
"I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh"?  (Ezekiel 36:26)

Cycle, stop.







*Sharon Doubiago is a distant cousin.  The poem above is an excerpt from her book-length poem, South America Mi Hija.