sister

Aydet Castro:
mexican,
28 years old,
working two factory jobs
under someone else's name,
answering my health questionnaire
only once convinced our conversation was not being taped.

it was an interview like any other.

or at least at first;
i learned of her injuries on the job,
children's malnutrition, financial troubles.
i reached the routine questions
asking whether she had been beaten
during her pregnancy or marriage.

at the first, her voice faltered,
hesitated, said no.
as we reached the subsequent questions, she still paused,
but responded affirmatively with quiet dignity.
i continued the interview.

a somber sense of kinship swelled within me as i spoke,
linking us across years spent in school, color of hair,
counties on a georgia map.
we were joined by the universal code of fear and submission,
fortitude and sacrifice,
fellows in a sisterhood of sadness.

Why is this so?
battling against cacaphonous currents in an unruly realm,
we are still pillars of thin flexible steel.
our families' anchor;
precious jewelry,
daily bread.
Why are we bound by such a blood-
stained cord?
slant-eyed betrayal.
bone-singeing pain.
long nights of shoes on the floor.

I hold my own two precious seeds in the palm of my hand
like pearls,
fumblingly fingering their irreplaceable jewel shoots.
Are we part, too, of the ones who cannot out?

i reach on,
into myself and out, out,
into a hard morning that dares me with its very fierceness
to protect my flowers from its unyielding glare,
into a day that demands a sacrifice
that does not shatter.

03.02.08