I see you sis & i smile a lonely summer until the sun skims
my skin like a softly wooded creek. Your light rippled
like anything heavy & meaningful will if given enough space
& the space you made felt like God’s gap. Black & lawless like
dark roads winding through Ohio. I married myself once & no one
was there Toni. No one gave me away. I did it alone in night-fulls,
sorrow drunk & high off another day’s regret just waiting for the wind
to laugh lightning bugs from all directions swarming to form a person
size jar that you know i gladly stepped in. The bugs remembered that
i never once forgot to leave holes for air & so they returned the favor
the light licked me cleaner glimmering bones & a gown stitched in
haint skin. I pulled the future over my body & let the snug turn to
hymn. The hymn turned to feathers so there i was molting on a
disappearing bridge when my hymen broke. Your name rushed from
my lips as a flooding river. There wasn’t any blood I couldn’t find use
for. I went to Eve’s bayou. I learned to spot snakes with flowers in
their mouths. I made crowns of seaweed & learned the gossip of dead
kingdoms & refused to die out without leaving something behind.
I wanted children so bad; that once I grew woods silent for about a week.
Bluebells fancied themselves friends of mine. Fungi leached bruised
milk from each breast. My nipples swole like leftover hearts. I want to
tell you i birthed something truly exquisite, A humminbird
with a jeweled song. Two scaleless dragons with smiles that leap
like well loved children. A sphinx so dark she had no choice but to
become the riddle. A siren’s song offkey & kinder for it. Midwest
afternoons on a muddy bank raining gritty memories. I named them
all after you.