I learn to speak to women

“Uncaged” by Sherri Romm

Editor’s Note: Best viewed on a larger screen to preserve formatting.

who want strawberry vines against their veins: little strings
to their mothers.          I live for six months
beneath a porch that drops dead strawberries 
every time a baby cries.

I lose the principle of umbrellas in the move to the rainy state. 
I buy one despite
my shame, the wood handle carved into a duck’s face.
I know certain things
will always protect me: the curve
of an animal’s beak 
towards another’s skin or eye.

Stepmother names me: impenetrable wall of silence. I walk miles 
in the dark, umbrella beak in hand–
hooked shadow stretching from my wrist 
across neighboring gardens
where red rocks deter their birds.

I leave home
or maybe the word is return
in glimpses. Eye the chlorophyll chips
swimming in the old green porch roof. 

Dead
strawberries fall from one apartment balcony

black
raspberries droop to another state’s stained linoleum. 

One woman tells me her dreams of a strawberry tattoo 
and for a second from my mother’s sleeve 
I see the swan slipping out, inked black-blue–and it’s
my thin skin glanced by my father’s hiss 
in the seconds
his anger crosses the room.

I come back as a bluebird in a fallen nest by the gutter, fuzzy with
my own survival. I come back faceless,
objects I don’t recognize in my hands.

Rain falls soundless against the fish pond’s impenetrable wall of cattails. 

I open my umbrella
but the canopy is crochet:
white yarn in the shape of a strawberry, small as my fist. 
At its center, a tea candle casts fishnet shadows that stretch 
miles across the West Virginia driveway. 

I open my strawberry
and the yarn opens into a tent
with my mother inside, looking up. At the center, there are red bricks
on the tent roof
with a wet glow to them, pressing down.

I open my mouth
and ten strawberry-painted rocks fall out.

About the author

Sophie Hall writes about homes and fears, especially where the two overlap. Her poems and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Yalobusha Review, Nat. Brut, Passengers, and Ruby, among others—and her first chapbook, greenhouse, is forthcoming from First Matter Press. These days, Sophie is most dedicated to her dream journal. Find her online at sophiehallwriter.com.

about the artist

Sherri Romm's artwork is a celebration of gratitude, a journey into the divine, and a grounding in the present moment, both for herself and her viewers. She aims to connect with people's conscious and subconscious memories through symbols, emotions, and energetic experiences, inviting them to pause and appreciate the divine beauty and enchantment that surrounds us in our everyday lives.