Daughter
any pronouns, undefinable
Who are you?
I observe my body the animal as it goes about its business, little hands grabbing doorframes and pulling bedding closer to itself. It's warm, soft. A thin layer of hair rests on its limbs. It shakes as it rests, holds back the urge to run outside and keep going until nothing is familiar and everything aches.
The tension in its stomach makes me cry for it. I'm reminded of watching a rabbit fling itself against the corners of its cage, skull crashing into the walls repeatedly in its attempts to flee into the dark and safe corners where human hands cannot reach it. Eyes wide, ears bristling, heart pounding in its chest, so certain its doom is coming that bashing its head is preferable to staying still. Too much fear for any animal to endure.
Another breath- I am embedded as it frets, sucked out of the flow of things by its fears: what is it, really, does it belong? Is it wanted? What is real? I do not watch; I become. The questions latch onto me and drag me into the abyss.
Who am I? Am I the ghost of fire burning in my throat, the ouroboros who looks out at a world of strangers and fears what they might do? Am I the hope that drives it all? Am I the terror that binds me? Are these things separate, or is it all one? Is there a difference when the lines are just theories?
Ask me which name is most mine, and I will not have an answer for you, nor will I be able to tell you whether anything my animal experiences holds truth. I do not know what is real. The last time I knew, I was seven years old in the dining room, eating toast for lunch while watching the trees sway in the wind outside. The spark I held so easily became an ember that flickered and flared as the years burned on.
One breath. I am whole. One breath. I am nothing. I have no answers for you, but I have so many questions.
Memories
I crept down the basement stairs one night, barefoot
on concrete black as space, and the lightbulb's chain
was beaded comets when my fingers closed around it
to pull; the pockmarks of the floor suddenly turned
to craters beneath me. Something lifted its head
inside my chest, climbed out over my tongue.
All at once it was cold,
but the room felt weightless
and I floated in the night sky.
The True Name
the itch, fingers twitching
warping from digits to paws to hooves
and back again- naivety contains
innocence and anxiety-
a spiderweb slicked with dew
a doorknob slicked with sweat
waiting to open the future,
"teach me to let go".