Complexity

“All that has dark sounds has duende.”
                 ~ Manuel Torre, via Federico Garcia Lorca


It is cold and the windows rattle.
On their surface, reflections of indoor plants—
those heart-shaped leaves with holes 
through which the old questions leak,
and they wait to see what you might do
with these old-new sorrows. 

I want to pump my fists and yell 
into the air I don't know, why do you 
think I should know what to do,  then
collapse in a heap like my mothers 
when spent, at the height 
of their own upheavals.

Then someone might come 
to help them into bed or feed them
a drink of water, stroke their hair,
hold their hands; after which
their sobs might gentle
into fitful sleep. 

And still they knew they would need
to wake, gather the fragments of old-
new wounds into a knot, pat their hair 
back into place; wield the kitchen knife 
over the scarred back of a wooden 
chopping board, so a mosaic of mutilated 
onions would tinge our stews.