Playing House

We crouched in the long shadows

of the monkey bars, and the little girl looked up at me,

her eyes veiled in warm light, "I'll be the mommy

and you can be the dad," she laughed,

"and we will make dinner together." So we scooped up

handfuls of the orange sand and pretended to eat frybread,

and I do not remember why,

but for some reason I asked her:

"Do you have a dad?"

to which she replied (rather matter-of-factly)

"Sometimes I do.

Sometimes I don't."

Later that evening, a close friend

wept beside me. Her hand in mine,

she pointed to her abdomen and said:

“There is something growing

inside me that shouldn't be there.

I cough up blood every evening

and the doctors don't know why."

And I did not want to tell her it would be fine,

but others did, and so we played

at holding hands. An arm's length

became miles, and we mastered that old charade.

"I'll be the mommy and you can be the dad"

she said to me, trembling, and half mad.

So it is

that with smiles etched into our faces

we bleed invisibly

from mouths sewn shut

and we can never fill the empty stencils

of our half-known scars with words of our own

but when given the chance to fill them

we are biting our tongues and answering

everything is fine

fine we are saying

grasping at the empty places

where we once had seen ourselves

we reach the end in silence

choking on our severed tongues

and spitting out sand

fine we are saying

fine