To the First-Born Daughter on the Fourteenth Floor of the Marlboro Housing Project, 1958ee Poems

This time, when your mother returns from the hospital,
she isn’t volatile, but her eyes are black
 
and the pills that stop her hands from shaking
make her docile, not gregarious, a word
 
you heard in school and think describes her best.
You’re the oldest; you know people
 
change from one day to the next: Until today
you’d not seen how easily your father’s razor blade
 
unfastened from its jacket – admire the metal
as your mother gazes through you – might the impulses
 
electrodes have eroded in her recognize the same
instinct beneath the olive skin you share,
 
the coarse dark hair you stroke 100 times a night?
She mumbles in a language only she speaks
 
from one corner of her mouth – a leaky balloon
that rolls off the fire escape upstairs instead
 
of a grenade. Tug sleeves past wrists, hide razor blades
and your ancestral phobia, as though a scar’s already
 
formed to remind you that you’re not allowed to play
with war toys anyway.          	It turns out there is a scar,
 
which scientists will see on your daughter’s DNA,
her fight or flight response, and though
 
she doesn’t look like you she’ll know
the village where your family is from is gone,
 
and the other village where your family is from is gone,
that you can’t hold a person down
 
for their own good,  	and people change,
but not always the ways you want them to.