Aunty! Aunty!

I know her home is supposed to be here

I felt the engravings on the stones that marked her home

Aunty!

My hands feel the moss covered door 

I bang like the elders had on judgment days 

Aunty, please, it’s Aniseh!

At this I hear feet thundering to door 

With a crash she wrenches it open

I bet her face face cracks at the sight of me

I suppose I would be disappointed to if I were to be-

Aunty’s hands are violent as a storm sweeping me from the entryway

Dragging my body into the house with ease

The door shut with the same force as I’m pulled further inside

Aunty-

My eyes are uncovered to meet her her eyes that I had thought to be blue

were actually green

The color of dew on a forest bed

And her hair was a darker brown than I had recalled 

Almost indigo looking

And her hands

Her skin

The aging tawny skin was now 

the purple of ripened plums

All these things were different 

I seek familiarity in the stone and wooden walls 

and they too are alien

When did it become grey and yellow, instead of black and white?

All the questions fly out of my head as she draws me close

The worry of strangeness all went away as she cups my face in her hands

Aniseh, my dear, where are your sister and grandmother?

Why aren’t they with you is the question she’s really asking

I feel the poultice I’d put on my wounded heart crack 

and become dust at the hope in her eyes 

No, no, no-

Every shake of my head is a stab at the old woman’s spirit

She rubs my face as she did when I was a wee child 

Oh my dear.

She need not say another word because the sadness in her eyes is enough to fester the pain in my own being 

I tremble like the leaves on a willow tree

Falling all the same as the bitterness sweeps me off my feet

All I can hear in my ears is

howling