Oh, little girl,
You golden child,
With your loose ringlets of red.
I saw you in my dream—
In the backyard,
I picked you up and held your hand.

I can’t remember exactly
But at some time,
All the family hovered
A few feet off the ground.
We tried to fly,
But we could only make it to the top of the apple tree.

I wish I could protect you—
Like I did in my sleep—
With your soft skull of cartilage
Not yet solidified.
The experiences that will shake you,
Not yet set in,
Like some mental clay
That spent the next ten years
Baking in the hot sun.

My mother’s head had been cut open,
But she had felt the splitting since I was an infant
Crying out from my trundle bed.

Then I was sixteen and still crying out.
Let me explain;
I couldn’t express that I was aching,
So I’d tell them my mother was.

But no one bothered to ask me if she was alright.
A friend of mine told me, frustrated
That people get attention hungry
When the slightest thing goes wrong.

It’s true, I needed attention.
But I don’t know why the word is so hated
Lurched off the tongue like lonely girls aren’t worthy of
Some common human kindness.

That shut me up
So I had nothing to say
Save one dismissive mention
No one bothered to ask me if I was alright.

The worst part is
The splitting feeling didn't go away.
Her pain is worse now
That I am nearly an adult.

The sympathy for my mother vanished
Faster than the money she spent
To lie in a hospital bed,
Wrapped in a paper gown.
The sympathy for me was never there.

They lay on Normandy.
Two hundred miles away, the empty shells of humans
Who lie below the streets
Felt the poison that lurked above.

They shuffled out of the underground,
Boarding trains and ships like corpses
And dropping bombs from miles above.

A little French boy is spared.
His brother whispers “Bon courage,”
As the rest of the family are taken out back
And shot like mad dogs.

Twenty years later, he stands on the beach
With his young wife
Watching their sons roll and play in the sand.

His tongue tastes a warm salt
That couldn't come from the ocean.
All he can taste from the ocean is blood.

I can see my grandfather clearly
With tears falling down his face
As his mother shuts the piano.
“There will be no music,” she says quietly.

She is an immigrant
And I wonder if she questions the choice
That brought her son to a country where he might lay down his life
For strangers, four thousand miles away.

I can feel him now
Hiding in the apple trees,
High above the others.
He is in Sainte-Mère-Église, and there are enemies below.

And now I take them in my arms
Cradling them like children
“Je vous embrasse, les deux,”
And I lie down on the edge of the ocean at Normandy.

I exhale and hold them close.
The sun is shining, and I do not cry;
It is nothing but salt and water to me.