by Kiyoshi Hirawa
she hated the term materfamilias,
despised its apical finality
as only a trained geometer could,
and instead called herself palimpsest,
a woman worn down, reworked,
scraped and sanded,
nine decades of repurposing–
immigrant, maid, mother, mathematician, artist–
many more faded to memory,
and now, with fading memory,
pulled from the studio–her studio–
for your own safety, they said–
she found herself pumiced again,
plastered into a pugilist, fighting
for paper and birch and oil paint and cold wax,
and after the struggle–
their sweat, her tears–
nothing remained of her
in that space,
except a fallen red droplet,
oxygen and iron seeking sanctuary within
a not quite isosceles, not quite right triangle,
a mestizo triangle hated by her theorems
but loved by her art and her familia,
a droplet swelling across the white-veined basalt,
its carmine hue consoling the adjoining substrata,
the pallid, pining polygons
terrified of acquiescing
to the staining and carving
and whispering of what they once were,
and what they might become.
***
Kiyoshi Hirawa is a poet, writer, and former police officer who was wrongfully terminated after reporting sexual misconduct and rape committed by fellow police officers. Hirawa’s work focuses on trauma, resiliency, hope, and providing a voice for the unheard, ignored, and overlooked.
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