Stone Mirrors Forbidden
Old branches crack as Edmonia breaks

a path through the woods. She wants

to outrun fury, or at least make a distance

between herself and the poison spoken

at Oberlin. The school is a shop where she can’t buy,

a supper she’s never meant to taste,

a holiday she can’t celebrate

though she doesn’t want to be left out.

She runs under trees taller than those in town,

where they’re sawed into lumber,

turned into tables, rifles, or walls.

These woods are as close to home

as she may ever again get.

When she was given a chance to go

to boarding school, her aunts’ farewell was final.

People who move into houses

with hard walls don’t return to homes

that can be rolled and carried on backs.

Edmonia crouches to touch tracks

of birds and swift squirrels sculpted in snow,

the split hearts of deer hooves.

Boot prints are set far enough apart

to tell her the trespasser is tall,

shallow enough to guess he’s slender.

Her cold breath stops, like ice.

She looks up at a deer whose dark gaze

binds them, turns into trust.

Then a branch breaks. The deer flees.