Girl-Warrior was lonely For the poetry-talk of the Old Ones. They spoke in metaphor, A way of language that alerted her imagination To the presence o… - Joy Harjo

It was impossible to make it through the tragedy
Without poetry. What are we without winds becoming words?

[...] my father staggering in drunk, beating my mother, the shame and hate in him burning, burning. Then he'd hit my brothers. And then me whom it was said he loved most. He'd save me for last, when his anger was ashes, when the fire was hottest. And then he's hold me, 'Sugar, sugar', he's croon, the tears so thick they made a lake on the linoleum floor.

WASHING MY MOTHER’S BODY I never got to wash my mother’s body when she died. I return to take care of her in memory. That’s how I make peace when things are left undone. I go back and open the door. I step in to make my ritual. To do what should have been done, what needs to be fixed so that my spirit can move on, So that the children and grandchildren are not caught in a knot Of regret they do not understand.