Absolution

 Loretta Diane Walker

 June 6, 2021

Memories, landmarks in the gray town of my mind  

where urgent cries echo through sunless rooms:  

my ten-year-old self obsessing over five cavities  

and the silver mines they create in my mouth;  

the milky haze from the roach bombs Mom ignites  

before we move into a tiny apartment  

with a sad sagging roof,  

the unforgiving confessions of its creaky floors;  

elders who sing Amen to wind, wounds, wounded-dreams  

‘cause history’s ceremony grooms them to remain humble,  

ask for nothing more than the poverty  

spilling from the pockets of their second-hand cotton dresses.  

Maybe I should confess

at age eleven, I threw rocks at two dogs sinning.  

I was a bedwetter until age twelve.  

In middle school, bonding with cool girls was fruitless.  

I failed an English test so they would like me.  

I tried a cigarette, choked, they still didn’t like me.  

I wanted to taste stars in the Milky Way,  

Curious of their sweetness.  

Nineteen, I pressed a blade against my wrist,  

didn’t know the difference between a crocus and hyacinth.  

The first time I had cancer, I prayed to die  

after the fourth injection of the “red devil.”  

But the children kept singing in my head

until my body was song.

I slept. Wept. Lived  

to plant a garden with sunflowers and begonias.  

Time is a manipulator.  

Why do I make these confessions to the sky now  

on this sultry September day?  

West Texas heat is unforgiving.  

With no insult to butterflies, I stand beneath  

a chestnut tree, snub their existence, long for  

the hummingbird I saw yesterday,  

and all the yesterdays  

when my body was a stainless cathedral of health.  

Loretta Diane Walker, an award-winning poet, multiple Pushcart Nominee, and Best of the Net Nominee, won the 2016 Phyllis Wheatley Book Award for poetry, for her collection, In This House (Bluelight Press). Loretta is a member of the Texas Institute of Letters. Her work has appeared in various literary journals, magazines, and anthologies throughout the United States, Canada, India, Ireland, and the UK. She has published five collections of poetry. Her manuscript Word Ghetto won the 2011 Bluelight Press Book Award. Loretta received a BME from Texas Tech University and earned a MA from The University of Texas of the Permian Basin. She teaches elementary music at Reagan Magnet School, Odessa, Texas.