Leave it be, the priest said. Don’t think about it.
Don’t think about how the wall shook
when your father shoved your mother
against it, her wail when his fist struck
her cheek. Don’t think about how
your mother’s hands tremble ironing his shirt,
peeling potatoes for his roast lamb. No, not
when you’re laying awake, helping your mother
cook, wash clothes. Not another thought about her sob
scrubbing your father’s boxers, bloodstains
off a blouse. Not here at the clothesline,
where you focus instead on a clothespin
while you and your mother hang laundry
in your yard above Chios harbor,
the tough wood clothespin gripping your father’s
denims ruffling in northerlies off the slender strait
splitting Greece and Turkey, the thin slip
of sea once breached by Ottomans
who burned Chioti hamlets, savaged women
like your mother, who reaches for a clothes peg
while swallows sweep the sky
toward the island’s other side,
where her own village faces west,
away from the narrows,
your father’s brute appetite,
his jeans jammed
in a clothespin’s splintered loins.