Sarah.

They stare, but not because
She is beautiful;
The poor one, they call her,
And thank God she’s not mine,
Mother’s firstborn daughter
A child forever,
She is watching a sparrow
Forming its nest
In the cherry tree
Her little brother’s climbing,
She is rocking, humming
A language all her own.

A little girl lives unseen
Inside bones growing old
In a world of dirt-stained fingers,
Shirts on the washline,
Heads bowed in grace
At the old table,
Thy kingdom come
Thy will be done,
O innocent one, rocking
In a chair all her own,
If she knows the word love
It is this.

The years become thirty,
Then sixty, the faces she knew
Become letters on stone,
Does she understand
The black dresses,
The burial rituals?
She is rocking, watching
A candle flickering
On the windowsill,
In fading winter light
A sparrow waits alone
In the old cherry tree.

Strange voices, strong footsteps
Become her companions,
She is waiting, waiting,
The neighbors hear
But won’t see,
Her world shrinks to walls,
While a voice whispers from history,
‘A glass of water given
To one such as her
Is water to me.’
So are the pills and the bruises.
And the sparrow falls

Unseen, water glass
By the bedside,
Hands clutching the quilt
Her mother made years ago,
Pink like the tulips she loved,
The words spoken are brief,
Blessed be He
Who giveth and taketh
She’s home now, they said,
And under rising snowfall
A tiny feathered body
Lies silent.

A young mother wipes
An old rocking chair
Bought at auction today,
Winter drips from trees
And a shroud lifts unseen,
Vanishing into the past,
Tulips rise carefree
From burial earth,
Thy kingdom come,
Thy will be done,
And a sparrow builds again
In an old cherry tree.

-s. rochelle

For more on the inspiration behind this work, or to read more Her Name Is pieces, click here.