And while her right hand
cradled the old blue telephone,
the left snaked
around my ribs
like those bracings
between cliff and vista,
or a parent, holding
a child up to see
the parade. This is how
she would lead me
out into the green
ardor, those subtropical woods
in May. See it clearly
now: a girl walks, bold,
following—no god,
but this woman
until the girl’s corralled
by trees, swallowed inside
their silent ring.
As it was for Daphne, new leaves
unfisted with such fury,
I could have never counted
them all. But when she
first lifted her hand
to my ear, I felt
the end and beginning
of each nerve, that live web
under the skin: shimmer,
dew, sparks. What is it
I asked, but already
she was riding the glissando
down and down,
pausing only to consider
knots, those two
pinks—like her own—
rising above my ribs.
When that first word, love,
slipped out of my mouth,
it was like a strange bird
the wrong wind
gets hold of,
an orange bird hurricaned
into the deciduous world,
then held against the dead
weight of wood. Oh, I
was far from home.
I should’ve called
my mother, but forgot her
while the slate-colored clouds
began to part. The tallest tree
dressed itself in a sash,
a light sifting somewhere
between brainwash
and complete tenderness.
There is always this
denial, scandering along
any form of knowledge:
she, who will always say:
no, no, it never happened
like that, that way
you are telling it. How am I
left, then, to explain
my body’s deep whorl,
the permanent arches etched
into me. By who else’s hand?
What chronology cannot
be counted by rings.
It is impossible. She wants
to convince me
of how every girl gives
birth to herself: her hands
clutching the troubled cord,
one foot snared along its root.
