A panther poised in the cypress tree about to jump is a panther poised in a cypress tree about to jump. The panther is a poem of fire green eyes and… - Joy Harjo

Each human is a complex, contradictory story. Some stories within us have been unfolding for years, others are trembling with fresh life as they peek above the horizon. Each is a zigzag of emotional design and ancestral architecture. All the stories in the earth’s mind are connected.

It will never be right as long as you are angry, I wanted to say, but who was I to say, because I was a child. And because I was a child I cowered under the table to hide when he started coming my way in anger. My cowering made him even angrier, because I was not brave at all.

I find the white enamel pan she used for bread and biscuits. It is the same pan she used to bathe us when we were babies. I turn the faucet on and hold my hand under the water until it is warm, the temperature one uses to wash an infant. I find a clean washcloth in a stack of washcloths. She had nothing in her childhood. She made sure she had plenty of everything when she grew up and made her own life. Her closets were full of pretty dresses, so many she had not time to wear them all. They were bought by the young girl who wore the same flour sack dress to school every day, the one she had to wash out every night, and hang up to dry near the wood stove.