Today's poem is by Cherene Sherrard

Betrayal
       

How wrong I was about what makes family. One spring,
we flew south—below us, middle earth iced pale as sheet
cake, a tasteless, shrinking patchwork of red barns & gray silos
squared by fallow fields—to a bone-dry atoll on the equator.
Nothing grew. Septuagenarian lobstermen harvested the coral.
We lay on sand so sharp and white it scarified our backsides.
No trees, no birds, only wind, starfish, and coconut water.
We'd never planned to call an Alpine Village home. We returned
smarting sunburns, squirreling away Vitamin D. In fall,
yard signs popped-up: NO F-35 JETS, REDUCE EMISSIONS
BLACKSLIVESMATTER, and WE BELIEVE SCIENCE. We mistook
courtesies for conversation, interrogation for intimacy,
hand grenades for handshakes. If a white woman could be
Captain America, I thought I'd be more than her Black sidekick.

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Copyright © 2023 Cherene Sherrard All rights reserved
from Ecotone
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission