Begin with admission
ok
I've loved most everything in my life
incorrectly
But so have you
We live in a world that means us harm
Sickness we never talk about
Mechanism that allows the gaze to
avert
How a heart will fasten itself
to itself
how no one can tell
II.
There's a saying that goes
Say it three times to make it true
Apparatus apparatus apparatus
A way to or towards distance
but through ritual
which makes it ok
III.
Unfortunate
you said to me once
How our hearts embolden
but do not cleave
At birth each of us is given three hearts
You will have to burn them all
IV.
Seven things inside the body
can't be helped
Instinct
this was the first dread
In one version you inherit her hands
You have her eyes your father says
But we live in a world with no consolation
which means what rends you rends you
Rain coming down the valley like hair
A weather you can see before it touches
Light on the leaves of a tree that is gone
Your life will fill with images that fail
Your body will drag itself to the woods to die
In one version the valley is green and the people inside it are
quiet
In one version my mother is raped in a field
but she is a child
and I could not protect her
I looked for you
she tells me
I looked and looked
but you were not there
In one version my mother
turns banshee
her body walks home
and no one says a thing
V.
A traumatized body
bifurcates
turns animal
mineral
calcifies
In one version you are made almost entirely of salt
VI.
Dear person it's important to say real things
Nature is not kind or outside
it pulsed smally
like bees inside us
In the body is a bone the world keeps breaking
In this version your body is not your body
so even your loss
does not belong to you
VII.
Mother
I've loved most everything in my life
incorrectly
In the bestiary is a body like mine
sits there
hums
In the bestiary is a body that looks like mine
but isn't.