Robes

Once I wore robes and stood straight as the trees.

It was said that the people of our world

were strong and generous and knew peace.

We were beautiful.

We were Indians. Indios.

In Dios. It means In God

I forget, was it de Soto or Cortez

Who said that when he first saw our graceful lives.

It is how I received my name.

But soon we were savages, beasts, animals.

We were tortured in ways you don’t want to hear.

I am a wolf. That is my clan.

I am what they feared.

I am a woman from wild forests

and trees with the wind through green leaves.

Yet I, the barbarian,

Wore robes and stood straight as trees.

He said he brought me out of barbarism

Into society,

Out of superstition

Into civility.

I wore robes and stood straight.

But I did remove his words. They were an ugly cloth.

I took off my memories

Now I try to undress a five-hundred-year-old wound.

I never wanted to meet great heroes or icings,

I only wanted to love.

Yet I met them, and they tell me I stood tall and beautiful in my robes,

Majestic.

Who would have thought I was hiding an evil heart

Inside my robes of splendor

Until they took my children?

How many women have been criminals for love?

So many I could name. They fill this place:

Sarah. Maria. Lenore.

All of us equal in here,

This house of the broken.

What I did for my husband,

I gave him all a man could desire.

He, who married me only for our land, our trees.

I helped him stake a claim to my people’s world.

If I could do it over

I would never have gone away

With the thief of human hearts.

But I lived by the heart.

It was a dictator.

All I did was for him.

I gave him all a man could desire.

Including useless gold.

Nature is full of omens, they say.

That day my husband and the new queen married

A mare broke loose and went wild.

She tore a stallion with her teeth from neck to foot.

A fish caught on fire as soon as it came from the water.

Then, strangest of all,

a lion walked through town.

The people were afraid.

Perhaps it was the uniforms of the armed ones.

They stood behind him

They say I know magic.

It isn’t true.

I didn’t know the meaning of these things until late.

The cures passed down to me by the older ones,

Were never magic, but wisdom and knowledge

About what plants would make old men have children again.

I never wanted to harm any soul.

I would have gone away from there.

And never harmed the thief of this human heart.

It isn’t comfort I search for now

It isn’t forgiveness.

It is to change time.

I can see that you think I am innocent.

That my skin was the prison

In the world of the beautiful and plenty.

Do not think that but know I did not kill my children.

I do grieve I had my children carry the golden wrap.

They should have been away from there.

But while I was banned to the desert

I considered how the king was taken in their games.

I thought, they love gold,

I will make this robe of gold.

I will make it of cloth that shines,

Cloth that came from the sun.

I gathered the plants myself and I gathered the dyes.

They were given me by the plants themselves.

I was not my father’s daughter at that time,

Given to such an act.

Yet I was led to them.

I stripped the plants thin,

Careful not to touch the heart of the reed

I wove bad intentions into her wedding shawl.

While they prepared the wedding

They sent the children to me.

My son said, See, I would be back for you.

Dear boy.

The clouds lifted that day

And the plants that would become her robe

Were so beautiful I knew she would place it over her shoulders,

My wedding gift.

It was a living thing.

And when she placed it on her body,

I thought, she will look so bright.

They’ll think I harbor no bad feelings.

But the children wanted to carry it.

I knew there were dark trades in the light.

Oh I don’t mean the trades of the women here.

But trades like my husband made for power and money,

The lives of children, the hearts of women.

And all I wanted was my children with me.

You don’t want to think of those darker chambers in the heart.

There was something I have no name for inside of me.

I said I was spinning the sun.

I was weaving the glint of the webs that shine in morning light.

She would love the beauty of the garment.

Part of my own wedding dress was in it.

I told the children,

Do not touch it. It will tarnish.

I closed it into a box so they could present it.

I would have taken it myself had I been allowed,

But I was not good enough to enter my own land.

My children looked proud to bear a gift.

That had once been my own wedding gown,

But now it was from wild fields,

And poison.

And yet no doctor could prove a poison

Entered the skin through gold, it wore so thin in blood.

So I would prove innocent of that crime

And all except my husband would not know

What I had done.

They died from their love of gold.

The scene of their pain was so terrible,

I ran to take the children away,

Away from those who would keep them.

I thought we’d one day play the stick game

Or skip stones in the river.

But the men were fast and they caught us.

I heard them say what they were doing to the children.

No. Not the children!

I tried to break free.

I yelled, I’m the one.

I’m the one who did it.

But before my eyes, they picked up stones.

Before my eyes they threw them.

While others held me

I heard first one stone

Taking the life of a future king whose fate was now

Undone. They feared the future that would have been

If my son became their king, mixed blood.

I will never forget the sound of stone against the body.

I would have died with them if I could.

But they killed my children and held me still

While I screamed and then fell helpless.

my little ones were placed upon my weeping body.

When he arrived, Oh house of blood.

They said to him I killed the children.

I was their wolf. They say I killed them like a wolf.

And I had walked out of my den

Covered with blood, carrying them.

I said, Look at them, my dear.

There are not cuts, no wounds,

Only the marks of the stones of these men.

He never even came to see the children

And how they died.

He never came to see his own.

I was guilty by word alone

Not one of us was loved.

We were minor stars,

Nameless in the dark matter of his universe.

The house of cards fell before me

I thought I knew how their kingdoms worked

But they were shuffled and lives put back in new ways.

I only wrapped my children in beautiful robes.

I wrapped them.

And now I am the wolf mother sent away

To live behind bars. You’ve seen it in the zoo,

The look in our eyes,

Sleeping on corners of concrete,

Urine along the edges of the floor,

Animals. Beasts from other worlds to stare at.

I am one of those.

A game animal.

A pawn.

I am one of those not civilized.

It turns out I am their savage, after all

And all the doors have closed on the wilderness of my heart.

Yet I remember the world,

The sounds of the water,

The stars in the dark of night,

The fresh wind.

Now I bow to all I meet

When once I stood straight and tall

And wore a robe of velvet cloth.

But I remember songs and people dancing.

Me, with my robes of skin,

My robes of fur, my robes of silk and velvet

Born from a race of people

Who came straight from this beloved earth.