
Anatomies
When mum says flowers she doesn’t mean flowers. She doesn’t see flowers. Tongue long unfastened from mind, intention baffled. Anatomy of rose & hydrangea, unpresent; the expectant carpel & stamen, unmet. Stigma stem style protective sepal— all unperceived. When mum says bird she doesn’t mean bird. She doesn’t hear crow & blackbird. Rattle of throat, click of beak are mine not hers. Trilling arpeggios no longer enthrall. (I, on the other hand, speak Avian. Every morning sliding pitch & scale summoning my own, tireless). Wing & underwing, feather & flank, crest & lore— all unseen, unneeded. Cathedral, she says. She means brush, says my brother, skilled unriddler of her words, her ghostspeaker, untier of tongue rushing to overtake her voice— splicing speech-sound to thought: unsealing mouth unmumming words