onions

your fingers still carry
the smell of onions
on their pads because
you were chopping onions this evening

chopping onions with your wild knife
and screaming from the red
onion magic rising into your eyes
and shouting

'oh no you don't you onion
you onion bastard'
and chopping through stung eyes
'oh no you don't'

and chopping through watery eyes
until they were all chopped
and humbled on the board
and telling the onions to tell

their friends what had happened to them
and then sitting down on the floor
in a mess of limbs
to hold your face

in your hands
and ask,
where are my family, who have gone away,
where are the people who peopled my life?