Today the daughter I don’t have
draws a long green boat on a sheet of paper.
For the dead to sail in, she says.
She’s learning about our ancestors.
Sometimes she draws skeletons
and tells me whatever she knows. This one
ate berries. This one lifted heavy things.
And this one, she says, told stories
by the fire. Last week she made tiny footprints
out of brown clay—five sets—
pressing them into the shore of the blue river
in her shoebox diorama. The footprints,
she said, belonged to a family.
The sky in the box is black paper
covered with silver stars. The family
was gathering seaweed and shellfish.
It was day when they set out, and then it was night.
Lisa Dordal teaches at Vanderbilt University and is the author of Mosaic of the Dark, a finalist for the 2019 Audre Lorde Award; Water Lessons; and Next Time You Come Home, all from Black Lawrence.
Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash