The Lightning Dreamer (4 page)

Visions! The night is filled
with fierce spirits and gentle ones.
Invisible beings spin and moan.
Floor, ceiling, and walls
whisper, wail, and shout . . .
Phantoms beg me to transform
my strange dreams
into stories.
Words burst
and fly
past trees
in the garden.
I rise up out of a nightmare
and grasp a feather pen,
feeling winged.

Feather pens, flowing ink,
and weightless paper
all mean
nothing at all to me.

 

So I give them away
to my sister, who claims
she feels trapped
and can free herself only
with words.

When we visit my grandfather
on his sugar plantation,
I see how luxurious
my mother's childhood
must have been,
surrounded by beautiful
emerald green sugar fields
harvested
by row after row
of sweating slaves.

 

How can one place
be so lovely
and so sorrowful
all at the same time?

My grandfather speaks
of the various noblemen
he might select for me
next year, when I reach
the dreaded age
of fourteen.

 

Twice, my mother defied her father
in order to marry for love, but now
she expects me to regain her place
in my grandfather's will
by marrying a stranger
in exchange
for gold.

On our last day in the countryside,
my grandfather gives me a cruel gift:

 

a yellow songbird
flapping helplessly
inside a delicate
bamboo cage.

 

The captive bird's
graceful wings
are useless.

 

All it can do is flutter
and sing.

My pen is empty.
I cannot write.

 

All I do is watch
my caged goldfinch
and listen to his brave
little song.

 

I have discovered injustice,
but what good is a witness
who cannot testify?

 

I am silent.
Useless.
My voice
has vanished.

 

Will I ever learn how to sing
on paper?

My indoor world of walls
grows so quiet that I have to create
my own noise.

 

I recite Heredia's poems of justice
out loud.

 

Mamá calls me a land of extremes.
My stepfather covers his ears.
Do they imagine that I enjoy
swaying back and forth
between moods of flame
and ice?

 

If only I could be calm, like my bird,
who waits all night for morning sun.

 

If only I could be
someone else.

Opinions.
Ideas.
Possibilities.
So many!
How can I choose?
Between bursts
of lightning-swift energy,
I enjoy peaceful moments
when the whole world
seems to be a flowing river
of verse
and all I have to do is learn
how to swim.

 

During those times,
I find it so easy to forget
that I'm just a girl who is expected
to live
without thoughts.

I speak my mind, and then
I have to apologize to Mamá
over and over, always the same
sincere apology. I really am sorry,
so sorry that I am not
the sort of daughter
my mother can love.

 

When she catches me writing,
she calls me sinful,
loca
—crazy—
a manly girl, a madwoman,
monstrous . . .

 

She warns me that no rich man
will ever fall in love with a girl
who loves books, but I don't care.
I will never marry a man
who thinks girls
should be
stupid.