The Lightning Dreamer (8 page)

The older Tula grows,
the more outcast she feels,
complaining that I permit her only
to spend time with her little brother.

 

She insists that she needs friends,
so I invite her cousin Rosa
and an acquaintance named Lola,
so that all three girls can laugh, sing,
play the piano, and practice
flirtatious dance steps.

 

When I hear the girls whispering
and giggling, I feel a burst of relief,
knowing there is still a chance
that my strange daughter
might turn out to be
normal.

The human mind is a garden.
Stories are tiny seeds that grow,
yet each evening, we inhale the ash
from my charred forest of pages.

 

Burning the poems—and pretending
that I've lost all interest in books—
is the only way to keep peace
in my mother's angry presence.

 

Now, when she calls me
profesora,
I smile and claim that I am not smart
and plain, like a female professor.
If she calls me masculine, I wear
my best lace, flutter a flowery silk fan,
and keep myself silent, wishing
that I could openly state my truth:
I don't want to be a man,
just a woman
with a voice.

Some of Tula's verses don't rhyme,
and there are oddly paired images:
butterflies in cemeteries,
and swans that float
on lakes of sadness . . .

 

Tula writes about equality
for slaves
and equality
for women.

 

When she writes about love,
her words are knives that pierce
my future. If women gain the freedom
to choose their own husbands,
will any pretty girl ever
choose me?

Freely.
Part of life.
Secret words.
Give.
Future.
Lively.
Love.
Equality.

 

The slivers of talk I overhear
in this smoky kitchen
are just as sour-sweet
as the peel of an orange
left behind, after everyone else
has eaten.

 

I stay where I am for a long time,
nibbling the harsh fruit,
tasting the ashes
of poems.

I have not forgotten how it feels
to be fourteen
and lonely,
so I must speak to my father soon,
very soon.
Tula needs a wealthy husband
now,
right now,
before she tries to choose her own,
the way I did, without any regard
for her family's
finances.

I feel at home, choosing to live
inside my own imagination,
savage
and natural,
yet I also long to be honest
about my desire
to love
and be loved.

 

Am I an unearthly creature,
part vampire, part werewolf?

 

Or perhaps, as Mamá accuses,
poetry is my beastly mind's
only curse.

Honest, kind, and courageous.
Those are the charming qualities
Tula begs her grandfather to choose
when he selects her husband.

 

But he has already decided.
He's promised Tula's hand
to the most powerful man in town,
a rich merchant who won't refuse
such a beautiful young wife,
along with the generous dowry
my father offers in exchange
for the tidy arrangement.

 

My two love-marriages are proof
that romance alone cannot buy joy.
My first husband died too soon,
and the second spends all his time
far from home, as if to avoid Tula's
unhappiness, and my own.

The sun is a ghost.
My feelings are phantoms.

 

Suddenly, I am engaged
to a stranger.

 

No natural words
are enormous enough
to describe the gigantic sky
where I would escape
if I could fly.

 

I strive to imagine
that my profitable marriage
will turn out to be romantic—
an adventure, not a business deal,
not this hard, metallic,
commercial transfer
of female
merchandise.

Tula comes to us with her sorrow,
but this time we cannot help her.

 

If everyone obeyed God's golden rule,
then young girls would be the ones
to choose suitably greedy wives
for arrogant old men.
How swiftly the laws
about marriage
would change!

 

But this rough world prefers
laws soaked in dirt, not airy ones
drenched in clear light.

Today I released
my caged goldfinch.

 

Mamá scolded me bitterly,
but I do not care, because today
one small, winged creature
has finally learned
how to fly!