Justice as a Make-Believe Sister

Justice cradles pain like an infant in her arms.

Justice tears her nails in the brown earth, persecuted by fool’s gold.

Justice trips skipping up the steps of a courthouse.

Justice buries her children under a mound of grey oval pebbles.

Justice whispers intently like a daughter to a god, like a daughter to her father.

Justice will let you borrow her burden for minute, maybe two.

Justice lays her broken bones in the silent sand.

Justice sings like a noon-time kettle on the boil.

Justice denies her hunger so she will die.

Justice will not surrender to the satin waves.

Justice wants nothing more than to restore her ribs to the dirt.

Justice will not allow someone else to be the sparrow devoured by the hawk.

Justice shoots a flirty kiss and then laughs.

Justice drags her feet like forks on a plate.

Justice wishes she were a child again, when everything was simpler.

Sarah Senseny is a poet and artist from Fort Wayne, Indiana. She has been editor and publisher of the University of Saint Francis’s literary magazine The Sullivan for two years. You can read her review of Blythe Baird’s If My Body Could Speak at http://www.americanmicroreviews.com/if-my-body-could-speak-by-blythe-baird.