When I was four, I started to see strange things
My mother and my father took me to be baptized,
and even once bathed me in holy water and
rose petals,
told me to admit my retellings were just tall tales.
Nothing worked, and then one day
my favorite stuffed animal
- ironically, a frog -
flew out of my hand
into the pond next door
the one my sister had told me to play in never more.
I shimmied underneath the chain-link fence
worried not for myself, but for that toy hence.
I saw a lady who looked to be from China or Japan
bound in chains, and pleading with me
to free her from the clutches of a scary man.
I told my mother, but what I didn't know
was that she had gone and then, hereafter
the church next door held a prayer
for the Asian lady who had years before
- in that very same place -
died there.