emma

Emma

Shadows of my family

hang from your smile,

like the chain

on your clean lace blouse.

Galena Kansas,

branded on the photo,

tags your face, like cattle

marked for market.

Committed, they said.

Pay no attention

to that girl

behind the curtain.

Days of silence

in a dark corral,

only the absent rattle

of pain and shackles.

The smile, tucked away

in a hope chest

with your locket

and ruby slippers,

waits for the scarecrow

and tin man to link arms

and steer you along

that yellow brick road

to the sky.

willow, 2009

Emma was my great-grandmother. She was committed to Central
State Hospital in Indianapolis shortly after the birth of her first
child, my grandmother, in 1914. It's tragic to think she may have

been institutionalized for life, for something as simple, and treatable

today, as postpartum depression.

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