Question

by Emma Flood

Mohammad Harris

This man, who can climb his shaking sadness to the moon like a ladder, asks me where did you come from?

The question is posed face-up, hands brushing the sheets.

I do not ask it back because I know where he came from. The outskirts of the city a river bank away, the tall-walled house with a dirty kitchen and clean floors. He came from a cloud-filled bottle, a smoke-filled room, came from a heavy dream and a heavier heartbreak. He came from a love song someone never finished playing and a poem I write too often.

He asks again, I respond as best as truth will let me. where did you come from? Sprung fully formed from the thigh of Zeus, like Cow-Eyed Athena. where did you come from? A house in the suburbs with ducks for neighbors and sticks for swords. where did you come from? The arms of too many people with too few hours to spare. where did you come from? Dredged from the lake like Excalibur, like a shipwreck, like weeds. where did you come from? The cold bathroom floor I pick my head up from most mornings. where did you come from? The part of your heart that used to wish for snow days.

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Emma Flood is an emerging writer living in Minnesota. Her work was performed in 2014 and 2015 as part of Catherine’s Monologues, a student-led collaborative monologue project at St. Catherine University in Saint Paul. She has lived in and around the Twin Cities for most of her life and currently works in the galleries of a science museum. She started loving poetry when she received The Complete Works of Emily Dickinson, a volume the size of her head, at age 11.