Snaking the Trap

I was too young to understand

that grown-ups had histories,

pasts which refused to be forgotten,

storms that never seemed to dissipate.

The belittlings of “You were a problem since

the day you were born,” and other indictments

were poured onto my mom when she needed

sympathy, belief, and justice after the rapes.

And that virginal vessel, in her own ignorance,

absorbed the hefty weight of her own grown-ups’

squalls that had been handed down

and handed down

and handed down,

until it felt like the Columbia slough was

damned up on my shoulders, which,

in my own greenness, I schlepped,

dribbling stinking globs and blobs into

my offspring’s washbowls.

But finally, my eyes clearly saw that

payload for what it really was:

not a thing to be honored like Gramma’s

exquisite handmade quilts, but

bio-hazard

built up like the toxic crud clogging

a slow-draining sink until it is unable

to wash down the dregs poured into it

over the generations.

After some time I recognized the hard work,

the long, tired summers and chilling winters

it would take to cleanse, not only myself

of the sludge,

but the muck and mire I misguidedly

spilled into my own progenies’

reservoirs, and I began snaking it out

so those who follow won’t drown.

Naida Lavon

3/19/2026

Response to an exercise in the book:

Ordinary Genius A Guide For the Poet Within by Kim Addonizio

Use the first line of another poem to start your own.

I chose “I was too young to understand” from the poem “In Defense of My Mother Who Never Bought Me A Barbie Dreamhouse, “by Coridad Moro-Gronlier