The Ballad of a Daydreaming Maid

Tender, soft and young hands
Spread out in spirals of want,
Tiny feet, walking barefoot
Over the cloud train of
fairy-winged dreams.
The softest coos, gurgles
and milky, blabbering words
Leap from the depths of the earth
As the mother chisels
the little forms
raining over her,
kissing the soft petals,
the dark hazel eyes,
the happy flowers sprung open
to her, a resonant spring song.

The days her weary hands
Wipe rooms, wash sticky dishes,
Beat, wash, strain
and pat dry stained clothes,
Her tongue parched to the core,
She chisels virgin daydreams
that she had nurtured in her womb.
The dreams scream in the sickening heat
While she hums silently,
The mosquitos and ants, all back,
Crawling over her in the numb dark
Of the kitchen counter
she wipes the kitchen tirelessly,
Spik-and-span, till her masters
come home in the evening,
The glint in her eyes, grabbing
the paper notes.
Her body, shrinking, coiling,
the vermilion smudged in sweat.

At home, the walls reek
of cheap, store-brought liquor
Coughing up, in constant phrases
The avalanche of her dreams blasted.
At home, inside the crumbling walls
Her toddler girl tumbles over her belly,
The snowy shrouds of dreams
Come back again, in the dark,
As the babe in her womb kicks and nudges.
Her morning begins, digging in the dirt,
Sculpting yet another daydream
and the next, under the flame-lit sky,
Within the polka-dotted walls
Where she breaths, flapping, undone.