That night, when he was too awake again, my father said to 

me: Sleep, and greet the quiet. Let these hours coat the 

too-bright moments of waking time. Your eyes were once my

eyes, and so I know that they will sometimes roam instead of 

close, roam to keep from closing, overfilled with wanting. Still, 

sleep, and if you must crowd that gentle space with dreams, let them drift 

not back over the falls and eddies of days past, but rather, downriver, to 

the calm hollows ahead. Minds settle with the years, like sand into 

dunes. So soon, you and I will let our turmoils and 

desires sink beneath ourselves, at rest, at peace, at 

last. And what soft comfort that will be, daughter, to drift as 

two waves, side by side, to join all others' in that 

slow stilling in the desert.

The ties that bind can also break.

One rope plowed rows in both our wrists.

At harvest-time our scars would wake.

Our father taught our hands to shake

and flinch. Against our skin he’d twist

and tie new binds, with mind to break.

He coiled his neck with rope to make

in silo bare his quietus

one harvest-time, his scars awake.

His crop was yours to leave or take.

You spread new soil, but seeds resist.

They know no ties that bind or break.

The earth will yield for no man’s sake,

though skin may bruise beneath your fists.

Come harvest-time, new scars awake,

and soon your starving hands will ache

to hold the cords that he made hiss.

The ties that bind again will break

at harvest-time, when scars awake.

Chelsea Davis is a Junior at Swarthmore College, and is currently studying abroad in Dakar, Senegal.