MOURNING DEW

MOURNING DEW
Where Innocence & Violence Share the Same Breath
Personal Story by Gaby Montiel

​A deer, glistening and pink in the mourning dew
Mirroring the sunset and burrowing down into the tall grasses
Is just as innocent as the bear
Head bloodied and mauled by the hunter’s spear
Mounted on a wall, forever attracting praise and never whispering another growl

The swan who weeps over his passing love
Carries the same purity as the fox cannibalizing her own leg for freedom

The woman who clutches her stomach in the familiar fear
Licked and touched as a barren fountain
Is just as clean as the baby she holds in her arm
Silvery and pale in the moonlight’s soft glow
Kissing them both through the fragile stained glass

Walking into the merciless crest of the unforgiving sea
Is just as brave as swimming until the horizon, just to kick off of the sky
And return home, hands soft and bleeding
From clutching humanity’s regurgitation

You are not a hero because you save people
You are not weak because you are innocent
You are just as pure as the bear, just as powerful as the silvery baby
As disgusting as the waste sinking beneath your feet as you swim home

It is freeing living in a world where bravery is not measured
Based on the gold plastering your lungs
The cobalt dripping from your tongue

I asked her to never leave me
To stay home
To lock the doors
To scream at the sky from the safety of the blankets I threw over her head
I promised it was braver for her to be alive
Than to give in and die out there
Her words halfway out of her throat before her head was thrown up on that wall
Staring emptily at the bear next to her
Tears running down their faces and drying into their skin

​She asked me to look at the stars at night
To hold our child close to my chest and listen to his breathing
To smell the mourning dew on the deer passing by,
To see the way the sunrise reflected in her eyes
As she shook her head
And left me in my cellar of my safety
The American flag knotting around my calloused hands
Snaking towards my feet as I tried running up the stairs

It is safe in the cellar
The cellar is just as cold as the bodies which lay above it
Just as warm as the Earth that birthed them both
I’d be just as brave holding on to our walls
Pinning my back up against the stone and pushing into the scaffold
Just to stay afloat

Yet the idleness of the dark is faster than the slithering patriotism of my home
The dog who has a reason to kill
Is better than the prideful man
Uncertain why he truly let his arrow fly

To fight is not to die
To die is not to leave
To fear nothing is to climb the cellar stairs
To watch her leave into the crowd
To hold her when she returns home
To listen to her gnashing teeth rip through the false peace
And lay down the foundation to a true one

She does not speak to be hunted
She does not speak because the bear saddens her
She speaks because she is wailing
And it is better to be heard
Than to lock the doors
And pretend all of that crying
All of that prayer to the silvery moon
Kisses our baby goodnight ∎