Grasslands

 4/30/07

She doesn’t speak of all her memories.
They are there, in her heart
And none the less real
But now they are kept private
Between her and the one who loves her.

We are too young to know all that occurred
Too smart to take it all in and see
We have our theories about how it was
And sometimes                                                
We try to piece it together with the fragments we find
Scattered or buried in boxes under the beds
But we don’t really know.

The stories we have heard explain much
If we will take them to heart
Often we laugh at them or just replace them with ones we make up ourselves.
But do you remember when she used to tuck us in, and we would say,
“Tell us stories about when you were little..”
And she would. 

She had many children, and of course, we were too many to stay in one place
There wasn’t room enough, and we moved out
So we could breathe, and eat and drink.

We would come back,
Sometimes several of us,
Sometimes all of us,
But over time, less and less...
Because, well, you grow attached to your own sod
And the story adapts itself to a new grassland.