This is no elegy; no one can write elegies
for such as you. There are no scuff marks here
for your erasure. No etches on a strong barked tree.
There was no grief. You are my silence.
Why do you choose to rise now like shifting sand
blown by a slight breeze?
You were my simple crime against humanity,
and, like a criminal, I claim no regrets.
I buried you too deep to call you a name;
you are my trail of invisible lines
like the stretch marks that did not have time to form.
No guilt resides in my house.
I did what we women have always done.
I froze the tears into a block of ice
buried so deep that the guilt is a cold in me,
a thing that will not melt.
What can I say to you who never breathed, you callous dust?
I can talk of sacrifices, broken lives.
I can talk of Abraham almost cutting Isaac’s throat.
But this was no holy decision.
I cannot tell you why I said no to you.
I am a worn white dress, all ash and grey.
Unspeakable requiem, do not rise now.
Do not ask me the worth.