Somewhere in a darkened room,
A woman sits lost in sorrow.
She thinks of her mother and her mother’s mother,
Both long dead, buried in a distant land.
Their voices would rise and fall,
Weaving conversations that she still wore
Wrapped around her like a shawl.
They painted bones as they talked,
Bones that belonged to their mothers,
Painted them black like the night in which they fled
Painted them black like the rage they dared not show
Painted them black like the death of all they had loved.
On these bones they wrote
Wrote in the language of women hidden from men
Words that spoke the secrets of their lives
Named the children they had never held
Sang the songs their voices could not raise
Celebrated their beauty that was never revealed.
These memories warmed her, yet she wept.
She had no children, no lover, no friends.
Just herself alone in this desolate room.
Who would paint her bones?
From mother to mother to mother.
And so because of this, she cried.
Who would paint her bones? She had never learned these words of magic.
She was not a mother, would never be a mother.
Alone in a foreign country.
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