A Lakota Woman

 

A Lakota Woman Speaks to a Corpse from the Seventh Cavalry, During the Evening of June 25th, 1876

The Greasy Grass licks your blood from m hands.
I cannot see where my own blood ends.
I am breathing now the sharp air of your death.
Your hair is the color of the grass, but is dead and strange.
It reminds me to watch the sun kiss the hills,
putting a blush upon the cheek of the sky.
My husband fell seven days ago in the Rosebud
with a great hole in his chest.
He will make my cheeks blush no more,
but, oh, how they do burn.

I take your eyes
because you cannot see.
I take your ears
because you do not listen.
Your feet are mine as well.
You cannot chase children on the Other Side
and you cannot escape my son,
who sang his death song as you vomited yours.
You were not ready for this death.

Today was a good day to die.
The Great Spirit sings many new songs.
On the Other Side, I hope all you wasichu
go elsewhere and do not bother us.
If you must exist in that life that comes after this world,
I hope it is behind a great spirit mountain.

Maybe you are only different while you breath this air,
maybe it is this air that makes you crazy,
wanting to own everything that is.

 

    

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