embrace this love surpassing the landline of my name
with blue skies suspended from omnipotence, I
come to you with my tongue out, from clouds of capture
: gleams of cotton : contagious cries, with eyes
opened : my arms tightly coiled by thin black wire–
war captures body, phone rings, the voice echoes
from a slash left hanging like my dead tongue, demanding
this dead tongue be a surrender : I do not owe a death
to any god this sunlight dances, swirls on spiraled
staircases, sips on sun flowered water : I am here
with you– victorious, your beloved, unraveling threads
of founding fathers, repeated offenders. I am fatherless
: daughter draped across earth : a constellation
of endurance. I was born to Mother. I have her eyes
: brown, wide : a sea of sorrow beneath seamless
suns, the veins give credence to memory : tension
within the jaw : memory : sparrows bathing in dirt
: memory : a man with a dagger ready to strike
again– stomp on spines : slit skin : endanger
the surviving little eye, who was groomed in bobby socks
whose limbs became stiff like bobby pins, who disappeared
into the silence between organs. His old hands meandered
down a little well : I know his imprint. Truth cannot
be wrangled into a lie. This I am. Woman who stands
by her tombstone, I am naked : crotch bare. I am
a testament to– do not be fooled by closed curtains.
The rift of my burgundy curtains widens. I drift. I am
a breeze of daybreak. I return to you : unfading
This piece is from our Winter 2021-2022 in-residency series, The Amaranta Project.
