Before I loved you, the figs were still in season. / My body was a lone fig swollen like summer. / My body was a lonely fig swollen like summer, / In every dream as bottomless as shame.
I am in need of privacy and a new wardrobe. / Indulge me. There is nothing that style cannot fix. // Outside, a colony of bees stir with a missing monarch. / Does that make them more or less of a swarm.
I’m tired of sheeping. / how boring, to be good. / a head gets heavy. / I can only feel this ribbon brush against my throat / so long, you know. / one day I’ll untie it, I know, let the whole thing roll off.
you write that “what we worship / makes us what we are,” and if this is true / then based on the poems of yours I’ve read so far / you are both a daughter and a god, / if this is true, I am a vine, invasive, here / to climb a wall. “As tendrils cling and twine / about the tree,” you write, and I try / to unwind your words into a history.
Moons empty in the whisper / of space between us. / Mother’s ankles roll into / my calf, brimming with silver, / with sleep. The night is made / of photographs. We sleep over / the prayer rug, woven from / all the daughters that have / pressed their lips to it / and swallowed.
The first boy to call me beautiful / had hair like a waving fist, walked / down the hallway, radius of curl / beckoning white hands that he’d / allow, though, I’d watch a little / light in him dim to tar.