One-winged bird

On a wall of my mother’s parents’ living room

hung her siblings all in a row

and a photo of Grandpa’s family.

It took me 68 years to ask

where was grandma’s family.

A simple answer, a dark secret

or just the misogyny of an old German family.

I’ll never know.

The whys of this are gone.

Half of my mother is missing.

It took her eighty years to begin to talk

of the feminine side of her equation

In dribs and drabs around her kitchen table

amidst pills, church bulletins and glucose meter.

A bird with one wing tied behind her back.

8-6-20