A CONFESSIONAL SESTINA: AN OPEN LETTER TO MY ANCESTORS

A letter scrawled across the ground: open    
to my ancestors as our connection fades       
like a family tree with an orphaned branch  
dismembered before adolescence by player
costumed as savior; cheap fabrics fool         
small village girls fighting to stay alive.      

My therapist said I was trafficked to be kept alive
in a womb that never wanted me so I open
like a peony in bloom only to be addressed the fool.
I hammer the memories but it never fades
unlike me. Am I the player
in this play dressed as the branch?

Before I could decide, my path branched
into a million sinews working to keep me alive.
I knew people became players
before I knew how to tell time to open
up and swallow me whole—let me fade
into nothingness rather than be a fool.

An innocent conjured into existence; fool
the nonbelievers with your strong branch
of ancestral pride severed but unwilling to fade
from the color of your cheeks; the way you come alive
when black waves collide on soft dirt to open
a stream for the child against all players.

Long nights last forever when the player
took the stage by force—fool
seems almost romantic when curtains open
to reveal a mutilated young branch
praying to death—no one’s friend—but alive
was the only alternative. No answer. She fades.

Four years, four homes, two campuses fade
to something summoned even players
couldn’t subdue: desire like unbroken bonds alive
in her earth-worn eyes. They were all fools
with false axes to unyielding branch
when demon doors and woman-made walls open.

Staunch student opens gates while nonbelievers fade
like sundial branches at dusk and Kansas kisses her
goodnight as the self-declared fool finally feels alive. 

Saitharn Im-Iam is a recent graduate from Emporia State University. She received her BA from Pittsburg State University (PSU) where she graduated Summa Cum Laude. She has been published in the 2021 and 2022 edition of Cow Creek Review at PSU where she won the Jo McDougall Undergraduate Prize in Poetry. She also has published poetry and creative nonfiction in The Blue Route, Coelacanth, and Runestone. She is the current Instructor of English and Writing at Baker University.