for eve
tell me again, mother, how it was— for speech alone to bind your skin’s border, to have walked
barefoot through paradise. for the breath of another to still linger in the alveoli. in, and out. to dip
not even knowing of clothes into the headwater of all rivers, a music smooth and clear and cold.
leaning back like a promise into dappled water. to be fresh existence. you first caught sight of it,
hanging over the bank. please tell me how it was to be, for just one blinking moment, only
yourself. while your father sat on his midnight carpet, silk flecked with starlight, and your
husband, thank god, had turned the other way. to plant your elbows steady in mud, pull the
sun-kissed body up, and reach undecided— to wrap your palm around its waxy shell, the little
world, the sweet harbinger, the looking glass. to know that for your daughters to live,
constellations would have to rain down like spinning tops from a sunken sky.
tell me again, mother
how it was to take the first
sweet and bleeding bite.
her inheritance
they say each animal has enough brains to tan its own hide.
i’m not as sure about saving it. in this memory, you followed me silently
down to our basement where flayed hides laid over every surface,
pelt side down. you stood behind me and watched, in all your plain innocence,
as your father took the blade from tail to throat, tail to throat. as he leaned like a beast
over the fleshing beam and pinned the poor forms of the creatures with only his knees.
worn denim soaked with fat and dripping membrane.
i was told i’d need eyes in the back of my head to raise you, but mostly i wished for markings
over the hair, spine, calves— rounded white, the pseudo-pupils of an animal watching. or hunted.
i wished this for you too. be it a wolf in clothes or a prince while you’re sleeping,
something will always be coming for you. in this memory i said to you, open your hands.
i have something for you. my mother gave it to me, and now i give it to you. now close your fists
tightly around it— you’ll need it. it’s called fear.
