The importance of a story's viewpoint By Emma Lee

​The importance of a story's viewpoint
　
Waking to a blanked landscape
offers an opportunity to see it differently.
Your mother's story of your birth changes
but repeats that you were early and healthy,
so that becomes what your family remembers.
Your father's story is more hesitant and rarely
heard: you were the tiny, fragile baby,
he carried in the palm of one hand.
　
No one noticed you didn't speak because
your mother spoke for you and you
were so well trained not to interrupt her
in public. And if you'd said anything?
You were told you'd misunderstood,
your mother had never said that.
The silence at the heart of you
became a space where you stored
　
your deepest secret. Others thought
that your landscape could be mapped
as paths, trees, houses, while failing
to notice this wasn't the view
you'd drawn. Would you take advantage
of the snow and use the altered landscape
to reveal what hadn't been seen?
　


Emma Lee’s most recent collection is "Ghosts in the Desert" (IDP, UK 2015), she co-edited "Over Land, Over Sea: poems for those seeking refuge," (Five Leaves, UK, 2015), reviews for The High Window Journal, The Journal, London Grip and Sabotage Reviews and blogs at http://emmalee1.wordpress.com.