We Thought We Were Lions
Our bodies were too big for us,
too much skin and strong bonesfrom drinking our milk
like we were told, back
when we looked like children.
We thought we were lions,
but we were really sparrows,
standing on that hill with a view so sublime
we swore we would haunt it after we died,
to come back as streaks of orange left in the sky
when the duties of being human beings
no longer applied, when we no longer needed
to say the words we’d learned
from television screens, thinking the word
complicated, wondering the word why,
assuming we were lions,
being sparrows instead.
Jane Ozkowski 