Awakening

I.

Some nights when I’m half-asleep,

I hear Mama’s voice say my name.

Other times, it’s Daddy, calling out.

I awake, half-expecting to find  

myself again in the back yard, hiding

behind the overgrown honeysuckle

intertwined and clinging to chain-link.

Mama holds open the kitchen door.

Or Daddy unlatches the fence gate.

And I, a half-wild child, emerge,

long dark hair tangled with burrs,

palms and knees stained red with clay.

II.

I want to say these are memories

but they may be hallucinations.

I’m uncertain about the difference,

just as I was uncertain where I was

when I awakened from a book,

one or the other saying my name

harshly: Your granddaddy is talking to you.

Papa’s voice, I don’t remember.

Only his decrepit hands, flashbacks

to the laundry room or the storage shed

where he lured me with the promise

of puppies and leeched my girlhood instead.

III.

Sundays, Mama cooked deep-fried chicken

collard greens, field peas, and cornbread.

These smells could be memories or dreams.

Sometimes, I awaken at night, craving

a full belly, sleep-walk to the kitchen,

awaken to find it dark, empty, and useless.

IV.

You need to come home, Daddy says,

his voice cracking over the phone.

Come home, Mama says, half-asking

half-telling me what I should do.

But home is twenty-seven years ago,

and I’ve been departing ever since.

I’m a memory to them. They’ve hung a ghost-

portrait of four-year-old me over the mantle,

a kind of memorial to the child who never returned.

When I’m visiting, sometimes I get lost in that girl—

remember the blue barrette clipping her dark hair

to one side, the indigo dress she wore for Easter—

until I awaken to my reflection in the curved glass,

startled by the stranger I’ve become.

V.

Tonight, I sat in a field of wildflowers

lacing the stems and weeds into a wreath.

The river runs just north of the field

and the old bridge where I once balanced

along the broken planks is still there.

I left the field, flowers crowning my head,

and I balanced again upon the bridge,

trying to get to the other side.

Come back, they call to me.

And I awaken, sit up in bed, wildflowers

falling from my hair. I am half-wild

and smelling of earth and honeysuckle.

I rise and run to them.

© Ami Mattison