to be so vile

i. if we were the eyes that saw the way history
was shaped under fastened jaw
we would cry red tears (not for blood but for the sweet eucalyptus sap)
yet we breathe the same air and spit the same ocean water;
i am a castle and you are a home – you can visit in the winter when the snow comes up to our eyes
because you would prefer not to see.
i do collapse as the world does in cracked red mud
the deer and gouldian finch (oh, my dear, my wandering country)
we will wonder what freedom sounds like, ringing bright in our ears

ii. papier mache faces can tell me how that blood was shed
but i will learn when she tells me (the friend i made on the playground)
what she learned from her mother’s mother
when they sat on the porch the night before
they are like stories, and she weaves the words
between her fingertips; she tells me of beauty in bark crevice
and she knows of the sweeter love as though she felt it waver in her own breaths

iii. to be so vile to our world
is a sweet pleasure (in superiority can find
a perfect gain and wealth) they know rebellion
and were, too, once kind