Nothing about her need to be seen has surfaced yet.
That blondness, those questions overshadowed, a penguin’s
rock still more meaningful than those lashes. A woman
carves her body’s boldness free and her mother’s skirt
remains a cave, a shallow lean-to sheltering against
intention and intentional stares. This daughter of mine
turns away from mouths, from untested hands reaching
for her waist. A reflection insists on sixteen-thousand feet
to grandiosity, but my girl, nubile argument against failing,
this is experience. Swallows taught you that nonexistence
is a fairy story when, in backyard solitude, you wore
berry lips pursed into a beak meant for nectar, for noticing.
The old men will cinch their vests each time you arrive. Convert
your expectations into open palms and I will tell you how feeding
desire is a blueprint to write again, tuck away, share as a deck
of cards that contains twelve queens, each with stems trimmed
sharp. Distribute your mistakes early, fall easily into someone’s
admiration, because we are all latecomers in accepting our worth.
