Susannah Sheffer: “After: An Introduction”

AFTER: AN INTRODUCTION

Home again, and it’s as if the forest
never happened. No one wants to hear about
that great indifference, or the lure
of the witch house, or what we had to do
to save ourselves. I understand they won’t talk
about the hunger, the banishing, how easy it was
to be rid of us. So I don’t say anything
about the forest inside me. I don’t tell them
that trees grow behind my eyes at night,
or how I sometimes want to touch the bark
because I learned to cherish its rough
comfort. I’ll do the remembering
myself, letting it make of me what it will
as memory does, with its own moonlit trail,
bread crumbs, peril, revelation.