never come back . never .
ABSTRACT PROMPTS. // accepting !
my mother’s mouth fills me / like the grave, worm-mouth, dripping flesh-mouth. here is the truth of it : all children eat of their mothers and for some, they never want to stop. flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood. her blood, given for you. her body pulled apart for you, two girls exhumed from the tree. or this : some twins consume their sisters in the womb, and if i’d been given time, i would have mine. maybe i was born with the flesh of your spine in my mouth, trying to choke you out of a life you did not deserve. eighteen years and the blood of you still pools at the bottom of my throat, drips into my lungs. eighteen years is too long to be so hungry.
this is the story you don’t want to hear : how a man and a woman came into a town that wasn’t their own because they wanted something that would be. how they took it and left, a child in a bundle of fine cotton, their hands dripping soil back to the grave-mouth, the long rotted umbilical cord. how they dunked the child in the bathwater to clean it off her until her mouth stopped bubbling; how she laughed, water-thick, when they held her up to the air.
no one told me this, but it doesn’t matter. i know more than enough.
AND MY SISTER, her body folded around the draping skin of her familiar, her feet planted, her eyes dark enough, even from this distance, to raze the earth. she speaks, her voice a metallic, unflinching thing, as though she draws her strength up from the center of the earth.
hundreds of miles from here lies a city with a skyline like teeth, by which i mean i am the tongue that devours. hundreds of miles away and i am a woman with a matchstick smile, gasoline smile that could light up all of oil-slick new york, standing on a terrace and saying, it’s all mine, isn’t it ?
I’M SORRY i had the life you wanted. i’m sorry for banishing you the way i did.
a girl is a grave. a girl is the shovel filling the grave, the hand that holds the shovel. a girl is the hand around her own throat in the dead of night, the way the word mamma sounds above the new york roar. a girl is everything she wanted to be nailed up tight until she’s left tearing open her ribcage just to find a way to breathe.
what is a girl but the grave-soil ? what but crawling her way through dirt that no one has thought to consecrate, toward a light no one has ever told her she would want to take burning between her palms and blow out ? what but the place her county fills with every hated sin ?
and now : another girl sun-touched, soil-brushed, a family that is not her family behind her, casting no shadows. perhaps, only, because she doesn’t look down. my sister.
SORRY i couldn’t be the sister you wanted.
SORRY i let you down. but most of all, I’M SORRY ——————
my sister : thunder dripping from her shoulders, dry ice, wildfire smoke. my sister singing a song i half-recall. my sister, who backed from the tree with horror in the curves of her lips / my sister, letting the witch in.
a girl is not the knife but the gut that splits before it. how many ways can we say it : a girl is a grave, a girl is a god, a girl is / a girl. a girl is.
on her belly in the dirt, ugly spilling out, hot, onto the wet earth.
THAT YOU’VE FORCED ME TO DO WHAT’S COMING NEXT.
and she asks you back in.
she opens the doors of a meeting-house that is all yours, that has never been touched by a family that didn’t want you. and there is no world to seize, no kingdom to hold, nothing in your hand but dust, but water / water / water. she sits across the table, one finger tracing the fork prongs, the door behind you deadbolted. she has set the table with blood and you watch it pool on the earthenware. outside something is shaking, but not here. here the blood-water stretches between you. half an inch of it covers the tile, your feet sloshing in it, the water of her womb. or yours, nothing you’ve ever created brought to fruition. or the woman who held you just long enough to shape your face, to draw out the eyes and straighten the teeth. TO MAKE YOU / IN HER IMAGE.
so who was the bloody-mouthed, black-haired woman in your dreams ? a mother ? or a sister with fading hair, with straight teeth and a straighter spine ? i’m sorry / i’m sorry she whispers into your flesh, into the dripping tendrils of your organs. lies, you would whisper back; lies / i don’t believe you / and i never will.
her breath warm in the crevasse she opened in the middle of you, as you cease to be anything at all. your dead eyes on hers, your fingers relaxed in the bloody earth. i am keeping this all for you, but soon she will keep it instead. i am keeping this while your breath leaves, while your soul rests in the warm space between your gut and her mouth. someone has to hold this; someone has to guide you, you poor lost girl.
