Letter Home to My Sister, March 8th
A woman
coddled in a gold collar
necklace
with matching earrings tried to sell
me a
story today at a four-star
Senegalese
hotel. Polite, Canadian,
I
thought of you when refusing,
as she
shook her gorgeous head:
“So,
this is the solidarity of sisters now.”
Now,
the girl bringing me drinks
at the
pool is not my sister, and on
such a
technicality, neither are you
so I
want to know what is this state of
sisterhood now? I think of you and me
at
twenty, trading our stories, turning them
over
like polished stones, your hands holding
mine
through the clinics and the cramping,
your
hands on the head of my baby girl
as I
practiced my football hold and the goal
of
connecting infant mouth and breast.
Here
in Senegal, storytellers – les griots
–
are
buried under the Baobab tree; its hollow
mouth
speaks for them when they are silent.
I
think for two no-commitment girls
we’ve
done quite well with this long-haul love
and I’ve
meant to tell you, Sister:
I have
planted a tree for you in my backyard,
and
when you die you can visit yourself there
at the
small opening, the mouth of the tree,
which
I will cover in a thousand, tiny, shining stones.
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