In August, spider lilies burst through a yard.
Open-jawed bulbs, hot-cherry, their long legs reach
for me. Once, not far from here, I danced a ballet variation
in their color. Nights I rehearsed with my tutu bleeding
through the studio windows, shining into the abysmal lot
in which, somewhere, my father watched in his car.
Who noticed me? Contorting like a doll on fire.
Nights I hurled my tour jetè over and over across the floor
until my body surrendered my body mid-air.
Nights I spent falling with pinned vision.
Act like it didn’t happen, my ballet teacher would say.
Nights my satin shoes bloomed with blood,
red blossoming across my sternum, my spine a jutted stem.
In the yard, the spider lilies bow thin in flimsy grass,
as if the owners don’t want them and want to choke them out.
A sign reads: don’t touch––poisonous.
What are they reaching for if not for my touch?
Nights, after bruising tired, my father would drive
me home beneath a mangled sky. I watched white limbs stretch
through the sunroof, how they twisted like blades tearing
into more dark, following me as we shivered
down the highway, where I asked myself
what I’d do if I fell on stage, and decided I wouldn’t.