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my mother was a bear that couldn’t walk itself |
her reside a sulking weight I trailed |
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grief hauled from under the volume of her |
my reflection, an infancy of sound-gathering |
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like an instrument archiving its vibrations |
I stored language for both of us |
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tooled it to fill her gaps |
we bore the cacophony as one |
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she arranged its tenors |
woefully concrete, stalkingly anchored |
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the shape of me lined with benevolent deceit |
her indebted angel-monster |
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at the door she would cant, hoping it might open |
night would plummet and I would flinch |
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breathe in what had been committed |
abandoning her in the light |
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words formed and stuck to the back of my throat |
when I measured her |
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I got an elliptical question that reinforced our wounds |
petrified its answerer |
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steeped into the matter of things |
staining the passage |
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some are lost learning to speak |
some have voices that shake walls |
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fill quiet rooms |
but the reprise, the inverted translation |
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desecrated us together |
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we needed to finish like this |
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with an aching acid chest |
marched to an absolute |
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now I am emptying my mother |