Dina Folgia

Penance

When I arrive
in the park, I build
in the place
where the trees
meet the road,
fold sticks
into the barest
shape of home. 

Quiet settles here
green. Soft. 

The evening
settles with it. 

The girl I was
will forgive me
for the mess I’ll make
when she arrives. 

I can’t think
of much to say
when she does. 

We huddle there cold,
crying like children
who took their packs,
filled them with
marshmallows, and ran.

It’s a hard night
with the packed dirt
and the roly polies
and stars folded
into shapes
adults made for them. 

When I reach the end
of my patience,
she forgives me. 

When I kick those
sticks, tear them
with my hands
and the pit of my sole,
she forgives me.                                  

When I smear my face
with mud and threaten
to cut my hair,
she forgives me.

She forgives the grass
on my tongue
and how the taste,
its earth,
makes me shiver.

And she forgives me
when, exhausted,
I lift my face
through the doorway
of this wreckage
in the direction
of our mother,
ready to return
like a dog

with this bird
in its mouth.

________________________________________________________________________________________

Dina Folgia is a queer poet, author and educator. Her work, which has been nominated for Best of the Net, Pushcart and the AWP Intro Journals Project, has appeared in Poetry Northwest, Salamander, Cherry Tree, Gigantic Sequins, Four Way Review, Ninth Letter Web Edition, Foglifter and others. She received her MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University, where she served as the poetry editor of Blackbird. She teaches creative writing at VCU and The College of William & Mary.