Repercussions Poem by Doireann Ní Ghríofa

It was dusk when I arrived
to a house of strangers
who say they are my people
their grasping hands,
their screeching fiddles,
their squawking accents.
I soon backed away
closed the door on their merriment.
Alone,
I lift my poor possessions
from the trunk
push aside blankets and clothes
and lay each small treasure
on the cupboard
one by one:
the brush,
the locket,
the bible,
this diary.
Standing,
I pull the pins from my hair
raise the brush
unravel each tangled strand.
I place my palm
on the fogged wall mirror
in this foreign home
of forgotten foremothers.
Beyond my reflection,
startled starlings explode
from the branch of a tree
like feathered shrapnel
soaring towards me.
The past is a cloud
from which my soul rained.
Who might I be, if here
she had stayed?