(for Ambronese)

    I’m helpless. She knows this and tells me
    to forget this place of weeping and change.
    She’s an afternoon shadow. A crack in the
    wall. A crack in the system. She doesn’t
    believe in the |Holy Spirit. Once she was
    a daughter. Now she is a lover. She’s the
    opposite of me. She’s beautiful and caring

    to those who know her well. I don’t know
    anyone. I don’t know people. All I know of
is poverty. The heavenly peace of religious order. Instead,
    I know the powerful language of the birds.
    Films. Susan Sontag and Wuthering Heights.
    But she doesn’t understand this. Why I
    shake like a fish in danger from being swept
    from the sea. The fish a hero for service.
I know the passages of grief. Those trespassed floodgates.
    I’ve bathed in the Rome of grief. The happy
    joys of soon to be forgotten pasta. Wine.

I’ve painted pictures of a mad country in words.
That’s my truth. That’s the currency I deal in.
It is also my sadness. My madness is my sadness.
All my life I’ve searched for a cure. Never
coming close. Only to demise and despair.
I would have offered my whole life to the supernatural
if the madness stopped. Conversation with
nails made of flame made of the master of nightmares.
Anything to stop the drowning. That fear.

    Instead, I have always been the author.
    The poet, and my struggles have been
    both public and private. I’ve searched
place and time and space. Holistic and the personal.
 
    The history of this has always been
    sacred and as cold as winter. Just as
    powerful and present. Burning fire in my hands.
    Adored and not wanted. Adored and
    not wanted. Similes and metaphors.
They judge. Judge me. Tie me up and down.
    High and low. I always have to take
    its temperature. Follow in its footsteps.

    Its noise leaves the cells of my heart 
vulnerable. The door to my soul open wide.
    My eyes wise to its repeated progress.

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Abigail George has two books in the Ovi Bookshelves,
"All about my mother" & "Brother Wolf and Sister Wren"
Download them, NOW for FREE HERE!