Gemma Remembers

I remember everything:
four girls strong as thunder
conjuring impossible flowers
and daydreams in another world.
I say their names like prayers.

Ann unremarkable as parchment.
Felicity a lioness, wild and too powerful to ignore.
Pip meant for cameos and evergreen bowers.
And one, who like an odd puzzle piece,
never quite fit anywhere.

We flew like hawks through London’s dark fog
chasing the sweet far thing
and trying to forget all that chained us to the earth.

Ann shredding her wrists to taste sensation.
Felicity raging in arrows and swords
to keep her father’s fingers from her heart.
Pippa who traded her affliction and a cast iron wedding ring
for a lonely unlife.
A girl who never really knew her own strength.

I remember everything,
and it never ceases to bring me to my knees,
a cold mouth like bark teasing at my lips.
We lost so much then.

My mother and her protector.
The little girl sacrificed so long ago.
Mother Elena who knew what was coming.
Pippa whose eyes turned black
as she begged to be worshipped,
now a goddess of crumbled stones and ivy.
Circe our old enemy, not our enemy at all.
McCleethy who died so that we could live.
And Kartik, Kartik who shares my dreams.

We never stopped looking for life.
Through the tossing years I saw what we became.

Ann singing the soul of the nightingale
on foreign stages.
Felicity let loose in Paris’ night,
caressing women with black curls
and violet eyes so like hers.
A woman forging forward in America.

I still dream of the Tree of All Souls
and hear his voice soughing through the leaves:
You have to go forward, Gemma. Make the future yours.
And I did, through solace and sorrow.
I lived.
The flame-crowned heroine of my own story,
putting the past to sleep to write my own future.

But when I hear the black call of the rook,
When I dream of flowers falling in my hair,
and the ghost of his mouth comforts me
I weep for what was lost
and remember everything.