Monarch
By Deanna Altomara
A long time ago (or maybe not so long),
your grandmothers boarded a ship across churning seas,
Just as we took to the yawning sky,
Full of dreams and haunted by a home that was no longer our own.
We weren’t born to fly.
In the darkness, we had no choice but to
start anew, to molt and melt
until we glowed like burning embers.
We built our wings out of scrap fabric and chitin,
armored them with scales cut from patchwork quilts.
We learned to glide on the screams of storms.
And you dare to
demand we disappear?
Go ahead.
Build your walls and watch
us fly over them.
Deanna Altomara is a graduate of the Creative Writing Program at Emory University. Her poetry chapbook, The Happening: Reflections on the Amish Schoolhouse Shooting, received the Edna Meudt Memorial Award from the National Federation of State Poetry Societies. She has also been recognized by the Outdoor Writers Association of America and Last Stanza Poetry Journal.
Photo credit: Photo by ZHANG BO on Unsplash.
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