upwards
i spent the day untying knots and then
reweaving them, yellow on yellow on yellow,
telling a story between my fingers
picked out in embroidery thread.
i am made of spiderwebs,
my body held together by the intricate weave
fragile as silk and strong as bone.
my bones sit hollow against my chest as they beat in time to imaginary drums,
aching for flight.
i tie knot after knot through your yellow hair,
through her darkening curls,
through his calloused fingers,
through the transparent tubes that connect her
to the hiss of a creature pumping with blood.
my blood, at this point,
burns through the mosaic of my body
like the hot coals i step over to get to class.
safety is a beautiful word. for now
i try not to let the heat of this world scald my hands, for my fingerprints
are all that define me to myself.
i have searched this place for definitions of sorrow. they are here,
hidden between the jacaranda petals and empty coke cans. you know
you can still see the outline of the moon, even in the spaces
it isn’t glowing.
sometimes my very step echoes like a broken rule,
sound beating against the confines of the sky,
i reverberate through the air like the final note of a love song
or the beginning of a prayer.
my body is a giant. i contain
the answer to every question, burrowed deep into my skin like the hair follicles
that twist away from my scalp, reaching for the sky,
i tie them to my head so that
i am rooted once more.
i am good at knots. i tied the stars together, once,
but they strained so hard against my thread that i
ripped it, stitch by stitch, leaving the night blue and frayed.
i tied my feet to the earth as a child,
something i recommend. there is
a knot in our eyes, when we are born,
looped around the bridge of our noses and extending
to the yellow sun. this the string that will only thicken as we age,
reaching forever toward something to burn us,
if we don’t clip it at the start. the frayed knot still lingers
behind my eyes, causing headaches when i stare too long at the sky.
something in me knows
that is where i am going
Larvae
in the garden there are now
bright orange flowers that open when the sun
is high in the sky, like imitations of their idol.
is that all the world is,
cheaper and cheaper copies
of what was once a purely beautiful thing?
i don’t want to learn anymore.
the more i learn of the world and of people,
the more the simple and beautiful things of my childhood
are complicated, dirtied.
i want my girlhood back. i want
to slide down the purple slide and skin my knees
on rough concrete. i want
to run wild in the street from the
chained dogs in the neighbor’s yard. i want
to paint pictures of ourselves in cool mud in the summer,
and slide through wet grass under the sprinklers,
green staining our bright pink swimsuits
that almost never touched a pool.
we used to lie in the liquid heat
like our reptilian ancestors, soaking up
a sun that had already long outlived us. i want
a thousand years of forgettable summers
when the playground was a creature of breathing plastic
and we tripped eagerly over the chainlink fence
that spat us out like
the unformed things we were.