Song of the Exiles
There never was a garden,
only a leaving:
miles and miles
of footprints in the dirt.
In the beginning—
the shattered sun, the wind,
and nothing left but our shadows
sifting through the dust behind us.
When we turned
we did not turn to salt.
When we turned
there was nothing behind us to burn
nothing to return to
though who could blame us for turning,
with only the long days ahead
tongues tripping in the dirt.
They said we didn’t belong.
They blamed us
for leaving the garden
which never was or would be.
Where could we go,
we who had come from nowhere
and hence could not
return?
Copyright © 2022 by Holly Karapetkova. This poem originally appeared in Prairie Schooner. Used with permission of the author.
Holly Karapetkova
Holly Karapetkova holds an MFA in creative writing from Georgia State University and a PhD in English and comparative literature from the University of Cincinnati. She is the author of Towline (Cloudbank Books, 2016), winner of the Vern Rutsala Book Prize, and Words We Might One Day Say (Washington Writers’ Publishing House, 2010), winner of the Washington Writers’ Publishing House Prize for Poetry.