My father carried us on his shoulders,
on his back
plodding among white faces. The world
bent at his
gait. He measured the air of a room.
Lancing nettles
jutted up within brown skin, as he
swathed us
in blood-soaked sheets. Lapping
them up in
raw honey and abelia. Never the womb
which
stormed us. Oceans percolated at his feet.
Branches
stooped to know the ground he levitated
upon. I,
too, levitated. I could only climb his legs,
then
back, then shoulders, and his head, as I,
too, began
to walk among those white faces.