The Offering

I’m interested in the ways in which we begin
to lie about our lives. How sometimes
the bolder lie reveals a deeper truth
though it might take us years to see this.

In winter the pond froze over. 
The swans were gone 
but we would kneel on the ice & watch orange carp, 
a shock in the low black water, like
harvest moons lost there, where the story 
of my first betrayal begins.

I would kneel on the ice thinking about the swans,
where they had gone.
I would make their long necks longer,
dream up words they might keep hidden there.

Of course I knew swans did not speak.
But my father, when he drank, said things
my father did not say. 
It was the whiskey making his throat longer, 
making way for other words.

Some nights my father glided into my dreams & bit the hand
I held out to him, filled with bread so old
it sank like stone through my skin.

Lynne Knight | Molecular Codes
Contents | Mudlark No. 62 (2017)