Hackberry Children

By Betty Stanton

Hackberry trees spread branches across the faux-thatched
rooftops of cottages. Women bring everything they own
with them, leave violence behind. Assault, stalking, men
who sell their bodies like livestock, spend their blood as
currency. Poor, the doors here stay open. Margaret began
three years ago bringing food, running the clothing drive –
she dresses children in coats big for their thin bones, too
fragile, too used to cold. They're so like my daughters, she
says, every step a struggle they suffer. Margaret fights to
show them the hands of God, a father leaving too early
every morning or leaving bruises blooming across frail skin,
breaking cold bones. They bring those fathers with them,
their husbands, their pimps. As sure as if they brought them
through the doors, they are turned back, women given a new
name, a new family. We beg, Margaret says, and the doors
stay open. The women, children, keep needing us, keep
coming. Hackberry branches grow like elms, wide and
thick in every neighborhood, by every sidewalk, but it is
soft, it rots easy, breaks apart. Here, we put them back
together, pick up the pieces where the world has broken in.

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Betty Stanton (she/her) is a writer who lives and works in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in various journals and collections and has been included in anthologies from Dos Gatos Press and Picaroon Poetry Press. She received her MFA from The University of Texas - El Paso.