Come, she rolls her eyes toward her bedroom
and shuts the door.We sit side by side on the bed and I sink
into her force and fold my hands in my lap.
My mother wants to talk about the war again
away from my father’s ears.
Today it’s Bucharest where a gypsy unfolds
my mother’s palms on the table and reads
each line as if it were a highway with a clear
white line straight into the future.
You will marry a foreigner, you will never be happy.
My mother falls silent in the story, I see no
movement in her eyes, she has left me on the bed
and she is standing at that little table in Romania
staring at her young pink palms,
her feminine fingers, those manicured nails
trained to pluck a violin,
wondering how could these hands forsake her?
For years, the war hovers around my mother.
For years she sits in dark rooms with eyes closed.
I want to ask about the foreigner in the next room
but she holds one index finger to my face.
Please, no questions.
