Bad Indians: A Tribal Memoir

want, though. Innocence; the almost virginal
state before passion. The love of children
who plan to marry each other when they’ve
grown up. Later we can teach each other
about desire. Today I want Shoshone Falls,
our brown feet in frothy waters, even the
blue truck of good old boys who back their
boat-trailer down to the ramp, interrupt us,
cause us to stand up and move on—two
brown women traveling through a place
where no maps exist, where every turn takes
us home, but no place takes us in.
Robins and house sparrows flit between the dark
lines of houses, between what is dormant, what
awakens. I loved a woman; I will love other women.
Never like this first time—I’m grateful for that!—but
always with the same truth. Just before the smallest
cry of sun is a crack where peace emerges, heated
and still gleaming from the fire. I write these words
down with the tip of a pen forged out of grief and
violence. I’ll send these stories out where other
women are waiting, slashed by nightmares and fear.
Cutting themselves, their children.
Sometimes security is a knife that slits your own
wrists. Nothing in my life or world prepared me to
suspect such a thing. I kept trying to play by the