A Wound Is An Opening
A baby, my brother, his head heavy
with no-speech, propped up against plush
pillows, his heart recently opened like a bifold:
the dime-sized hole sewn up hastily
before anything else vital
slipped out. There I was a girl
practicing cartwheels
on the pintucked pink couch
whose back rested against a window
I threw myself into – a foot breaking glass,
bright blood at the heel and later black
as it dried onto the stiff stitches,
stitching the tiny wound.
A wound is an opening.
His chest a riverbed of scar tissue.
On my foot, all that remains:
a tiny white mark in the shape
of a wishbone.
The Pool
Pa built one, dug the hole
with a few of his friends
till the earth piled up and I’d scale
the excess mound in search
of treasure. To save money,
he stretched the sides of Mystic Blue,
a liner he’d found on clearance,
laid the tile himself.
From the back patio we watched
the lines of his face darken
with dusk, the gaps slowly filling
with grout. After the cool groundwater
was called from deep soils
through a bright hose, chemicals
added, temperature brought to a balmy
eighty-six degrees, he stepped in,
my wordless brother stiff in his arms.
I’d heard of baptizing,
and even though we had no god
in our house, this is what I remember.
My father moved through that chlorinated lake
holding his first-born – small arms akimbo,
hair loose snakes – sashaying
him across the calm surface,
while my brother, very slowly,
relaxed his tense muscles, gazed
skyward. Then, finally, my father
threw back his head and laughed.
Sonya Schneider's poetry can be found or is forthcoming in Catamaran, Naugatuck River Review, Potomac Review, Raleigh Review, Rust & Moth, Whale Road Review and elsewhere. She lives and writes in WA.
