Because Everything Here Is a Brightness
       

In this version, the sky smuggles stars
over a horizon's barbed border without

a single shot fired. & someone is always
emptying our cages of their children.

Another folds into pollen into comb
into a sweetness that carries no sting.

& because we were given so much at first,
it's okay when a little is taken back.

When running half-naked in the backyard,
my daughters don't ask why the world

will soon shield its eyes from their bodies.
Or stare, longingly. Or touch. Or worse.

The country their great-grandparents fled
& the country that interned them & today

the way our neighbors spit their venom
cannot, in this lullabied version, take root

under our skin. Swell. Redden. No, this vibrant
sidewalk chalk doesn't mean someone's fallen.

Yes, our fields will forever refuse to age into cemeteries.
I promise these doors we're drawing on your bedroom wall

will swing & stay open. Widely. Wildly. & my hesitant,
half-broken hands will always ache toward light.

Because of your light. Because this sky. Because everything
here is a brightness. & the stars singeing your palms,

I pray will never heal.

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Copyright © 2022 John Sibley Williams All rights reserved
from The Southern Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission