Clairvoyance

A people’s first language is the motion of their basketweave.

Yes, death, our motion: yours. But, for making me forget

where around my husband’s bend a cobra lurked,

your repentance: not enough.

He and I we remain close as severed roots of banyan tree.

Yes, your melody taught me to lace

the rhythm of my work, a melody that fits through a basket’s

thousand eyes—a rattle without a chant

until I heard my husband’s

killing song. I was a child no one believed, beaten

as an aging weaver’s hand. Vision, too, is never enough

like baskets never empty: my son will live

inside the pause between two whispers. He will embrace that pause like a man

fucking, pull himself from it just as quick. I draw him away from your path

by my own strand inside the bark. I am no longer the child

you taught, nameless

inside the junctions, bound to the weaving.