Intermediary

Bahareh Bisheh, "I Have a Mother...," 2012

An orphan like me wins a place in the heart of a
family by carrying their stories, laying my pallet
down for sleep at the entry to their vault full of
secrets. “See? A little human child,” they smile,
“weak and pretty as a grass stem, hardly able to
carry us in the peristyle if we called her.” So they
let me come near, a favored pet, to take leftovers
from their hands, slowly stroke my hair, murmur
soft words in the shape of flowers, of rain. And
me, the orphan girl—I earn my keep by listening
to these loa and others like them, their tales an
aquifer, a braiding of underground streams too
deep to dowse, their breath shaping songs that
flow through me to you, hollow reed that I am.