Stones by Alice Teeter
She wanted to know she asked
not long before she died I answered
fingers over my mouth my voice
muffled
Forgiveness is a slow slow turn
of many rocks or the same one rolled
again and again a painstaking look
at the veins of quartz
a test of surface with tongue
see what shines the dirt and bits
of leaves brought in the tang of
swallowed grit between the teeth
the crunch brittle in the ears
It takes a lot of wary cleaning
the watchful piling up of many stones
to understand all of what you forgive
and whom
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