Vlora Konushevci

She lifts the bucket again, wrists raw, the hill leaning away from her.
No one says a word for what happened; the house just holds its breath.
The door never shut right after that night.

They said God never burdens us with more than we can carry.
Prayers nailed to the wall. Pray, they said, or you’ll go crazy.
Half-moons carved into her hands from the bucket,
the month measured in blisters.

At night she pressed her belly to the stone,
cold, ice cold, to make it disappear.
Stone whispering unmake, unmake, unmake,
and she begging the stone to answer,
dreams splitting open with rivers,
nightmares that left her teeth grinding.

The midwife appeared once,
with some strange herbs in her pocket,
said patience, and left her to the plum tree
dropping white petals like paper shrouds,
the yard green as if nothing had happened,
as if nothing was happening still.

A stuffed bunny tied to a vine,
arms outstretched like a scarecrow,
to keep the cold from crossing the threshold.
But no scarecrow could guard
what was growing inside her.

Then the blankets, the boiling water,
the knife glowing red, metal remembering fire,
the walls bending, twisting, laughing,
war had entered her body and called it victory.

Until,
they placed the bundle in her arms.
But it wasn’t hers.
Not hers. Never hers.
She held the bundle anyway,
because the body holds what the body is given,
even when it is foreign,
even when it carries a language her blood does not speak.

Morning still bothered to arrive,
because hands are made to obey war’s command,
and the roots don’t ask whose hands buried them.