An Indigenous Girl Searching For Times Gone By

Here we are writing poems in English. / An Indigenous girl searching for times gone by. / Had to get a PhD just to be taken seriously in the world. / Digging in the archives of stories written about us by our torturers.

Listening to wax recordings of her great, great grandma. / The last speaker. She goes to the library.

It’s a forest where / everything is still enough / for her to hear / the books / of her ancestors / in the mist.

Some things can’t be found on Google.

She puts tobacco down on the ground / and cries a prayer into the soil.

“Help me bring back all that was stolen.”

The air is so quiet it’s hard to imagine anyone heard her.

She walks down the mountainside / back to her car with / just enough / gas to get / Home.

The ground crunches beneath her feet / just like any other day.

Little does she know the storm / of answers to her prayers is / welling on the horizon.

From there a flurry of ideas / people / coincidences / opportunities / elders / long lost relatives /understandings / pop into her life.

Ten years later she’s a / leader / led by / the souls of / Ancestors.