Ceremony
After her father leaves her mother
Madi wears her pink shoes backwards.
She wants to know about earthquakes—
why they happen. She is six.
She refuses to leave the rug of terra firma
brown on our cluttered classroom floor,
cares nothing for math,
detests division.
She wants only to sew this picture—
embroiders it stitch by stitch by stitch—
Two suns shine on a crumbling cottage.
Madi lives inside it.
We lift the little rug from her guarded lap,
wrap it soft across her small shoulders.
She makes a cape of it
and flies.
Robin Turner is the author of Bindweed & Crow Poison (Porkbelly Press). A Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize nominee, her work is forthcoming in One, Heron Tree Review, and Red Earth Review, and has most recently appeared in DeLuge, Glass, and Sweet Tree Review. She is a community teaching artist in Dallas, Texas, and an online writing guide for homeschooled teens.
