Poetry

He says go up in skies, a spell for us.

How mistaken we were / about what mothering means.

nothing was ever / enough, not the way I loved her, or later, the way I changed the way I / loved her.

Was your face veiled, your belly tethered, / your cry unslapped? You are only questions.

That was last year / You said, crumpling the paper into shapes

My affair here is with / a machine.

she knows herself, the patterned ladder, / knows the circumvention of the mind

That January day I stood / as if iced in

I’m stuck on my body, / how we’ve communicated in betrayal.

not a hair more // Than any person should need another person

Weightless you fly now, / gravity doesn’t grapple with you