In May the moon’s barbed aftertaste climbs
out of my throat to grow poppies. My larynx
sores itself. The same month, Ma tells me about
everything she has never loved: the sea. Your father.
Oriental flowers. Introductions. Her crow’s
feet proclaim themselves a thesis, fired
into prepubescent air like a bullet. Yes, this is another thing
we learn as daughters—how to perpetually be on the verge
of drawing a gun. To know the spine of it.
Once, I imagined un-plying someone open
opium red. Gentling myself. To beat miracles out
of sickle soil, this sham lunar cycle, to mouth
along the edge of a kiss & be not an anvil or the misshapen
sky or something locked
in a room. My mother says everyone I love is still
in this room. Listen: Pliny and Shakespeare are remembered
for metaphoring rooms & gardens,
mothers & daughters. If a room is a garden
then a gun is a garden a hello is a garden a father is
a garden the absence of a
father is a garden. What is a mouth if not a quiet red
peace. I dream of the street beside my childhood
home, blushing with perennials.
In this dream I hold a gun barrel-first. It goes off: out
magic-tricks a moon & its halo, stigma and
all. My mother reaches
for my hand; I do not ask for anything
more. Someday I will be twenty-eight* & love will come
to me bristling and diaphanous. Let us call this love
you, matching the beat of my open breath. Here, here, and
here, I point. This is where you are allowed to touch me.
You’ll ask, breathless, about why I keep killing
all the roses & amaryllis & sunsets.
It’s an old story. I should tell it again.
