aubade as the morning ghosts sing

Leyla Yilmaz

“home is about the earth. whether the earth opens up to you. whether it pulls you so close the space between you and it melts and it beats like your heart.”

—- jesmyn ward, sing, unburied, sing in the plains, beings with mouths, or without, unable to tell what it is they are searching for, watch as the morning sun rises. stuck in between time and big oaks, blood-red with the season, there is a burning hope-attached to a whisper of the memory of home, now gone cold. home is where the water is. the water tends to the oaks—to hope, for the waves know of tragedy & cold bodies washing up to their shores. cold water rises and washes the land anew. yet the crimson red and the burning flesh is remembered by those in hiding. hiding under & above bird nests, hoping to catch a whisper of freedom from the winds the black birds leave behind by shaking their bodies, waking their wings, flying. to those in hiding, in watching, home is nowhere and within every breeze. it is every warm conversation lighting their ghostly, cold bodies up with a gentle fire, in kind remembrance. there is this haunting & this yearning of a past that could’ve been free. there is this memory of home— what it could have been, and all that it wasn’t. in the smoky billowing of the dawn, within the creaks of a house, there is written history and a fate foretold for those who dare to see, to listen, and set themselves free.

A Wine Bottle, Flowers, and Fruit