float [cw: sexual violence]

It was Mother’s Day on Turtle Island yesterday, so I rang mine.

We chatted about Ireland, geraniums, Colorado summer.

The gears changed as she told me another woman in our lineage joined us;

Three days ago, her body was taken against her will.

I began to float as I learned to do when the same happened to me;

As I listened, I asked questions with hollow voice - the familiar leaving came.

I waited for feeling to land, but there was none.

I said it made me sad for her, because I knew somewhere it did.

My body carried me to the beach as our call ended.

Something inside me knows to run to the sea when anguish is coming for me.

I stuffed my pocket with seaweed, marveling at the sunset.

On my walk home, he joked about periods.

The rage bubbling inside me sharpened.

I woke up to Irish sunshine.

I plopped myself, my laptop on the table.

My fingers clattered along the keyboard, chipping away at the research note:

Indigenous women & generations of police who have and continue to brutalize them.

I noticed the floating creep back in, and finally tears came.

Instead of jumping over it, I decided to ride the wave.

I stepped away from the screen and into the sunshine.

Chills met my skin as the sun and wind kissed my arms.

When will it stop?