What do you remember?
A poem by Mylo Schaaf

What do you remember?

Our leader had kept his promise.
We sat on jumbles of gold hay,
in the quiet of fragrant summer.
Above us eucalyptus leaves flickered
and stroked the air
like mint-green fingers.

“This climb is tough,” he said,
to a circle of steely faces,
crowned with grey, brown, or white.
“And we are strangers, untrusted, untried.”
He flung his long arms out, like a conductor.
“I want you all to tell us some truth,” he demanded.
“What was it like when you were a child?”

Stories blew out slowly at first.
We were lucky. Childhood was happy.
Then came a vortex of pain, sadness, the sweat of fear.
Pants ripped away for an agony of spanking.
Butchered blond curls on a linoleum floor.
Hiding under the covers, in a cold, empty house.

Weeks later, long after my blisters healed,
I’m caught by the words and the unwavering sorrow
in that gold meadow
under that mint-green veil.
My children are grown. When they come by,
they hug and kiss me.
What if I ask if I had harmed them or scared them,
or if ever they were desperate and called for me,
and I didn’t come?

About the Author:

Mylo Schaaf is the author of Blown into Now – Poems for a Journey, published by Blue Light Press. Her poems have appeared in Haunted Waters Press, Drunk Monkeys Literary Magazine, Passager Journal, Wordpeace Journal, Pandemics Journal, and others. Mylo worked in journalism, book publishing, and as a physician, before taking a left turn into poetry. After the death of Alex, her 24-year-old son, healing poems demanded to be written. http://myloschaaf.com/

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