João Camilo Poet Rhyme

She followed her mother to the backyard

She followed her mother to the backyard
when the sun harvested the last crop
and a rain of stars started to drop.
She carried a comb and a mirror shard,
Her long hair flooding down on her shoulders – still like the wind.
 
Her mother halted then said:
“sit here, on the rim of this old well.
There is something I must tell:
in the past, only if you were a maid - 
aged or youthful – like every woman one day was and will be,
 
you would be allowed in this place.
We were shielded by a wall
whole, white and nine feet tall,
until dusk, without seeing a male face.
There was a table and few chairs made of wood and tangled straw.
 
Mother would strum slowly my hair,
and my sisters’- your aunties - too,
They chatted without anything else to do,
waiting for their turn on the chair.
My mother´s playtime with her dolls – four dolls with long, long hair.
 
The chair was broken and feed a pyre,
when a fire came down from the sky
and night’s vigilant hazy eye
observed a black smoking spire.
We cut our hair and covered our heads with hands, screams and a scarf.
 
But I recall my mother’s pride
when she was combing my hair,
while your father was on a chair
waiting for us to go inside…
Mother said: better a man learn soon that he must wait or just leave.
 
Your auntie said I looked just fine,
But mother couldn’t accept this, 
‘beautiful’, she said and gifted me a kiss,
‘soon, you are not going to be mine.’
My sisters laughed – my mother laughed too but couldn’t conceal a tear.”
 
And a girl sat on her mother’s knees,
too young to fully understand
but she closed her eyes and held a hand
to pretend that she could also see:
the wall, the chairs, a mother combing her daughter’s beloved hair.

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