Pounding for something to change, she waits with a force as mighty as the love of a thousand mothers.
Gathering evidence for the surfeit of joy in the world, she tends barely to her alimentary needs while creating plates from lost stones and caring for the small ones who got left behind–
their small strong feet shuffling down cobblestone roads stained in life given up for a god, small strong feet traveling past borders put down by the fearful ones, then torn up by the wanting ones, transferring smiles in exchange for power, then smiles fade and worlds crumble on a dirty side street, heavy with prayer and loathing.
As the slowing engines stop and the whirring of battle sounds softens toward silence, and the daze of what war has done settles into the stomachs of stopped-shocked soldiers, she waits with the weight of faith, avoiding only the thing that will deter her flow.
Quietly tucking the children’s lives under blankets woven for leaders, listening to the future of young dreams, she threads the pieces of their stories to one another, until they awaken with rubbed-open eyes and mumbles of visions, fresh for life and prepared to walk another day.
Ignoring the clickity clack of rebuttals that discount the value of human life, ignoring the cosmic injustice that brings bells to her head, and the promises made that fade with the music in the background of an old closing coffee shop, she waits, with the power of her sitting silence and that inveterate tendency to look careless despite all of the care she is filled with.
In the hollow hole of her hope, she repeats, thank you, thank you, thank you, as if each thank you will save a life, in this way she changes the course of the earth’s turn, praying it will spin in their favor.
Calm and prepared for the revolution arriving, she waits.
