stutter-promotional

How disquieting,

the stutter of false play.

Seeing yourself, the way you look from a distance,

assuming you are the same at no distance.

Asking questions that ended marriages,

she sees herself in the face she’s becoming.

You ask, Who will she be in the next life?

She wombs herself,

unravels all that can be undone,

her longing shaping the amniotic landscape

sensing what she loves most this lifetime.

Inside her first memory: fitting within his two hands,

the radiant present of his hands enlivening her spine

fishtailing her through dream.

She chooses touch,

And first morning laughter.

Tendrils of light,

the thin lace of her roots,

a convergence of rivers.

The Stutter of False Play

What can you give that can never be taken?

Last night I found her amidst muffled cries

I will hold her thin bones against my ample flesh till the quivering

subsides

How will you hold the rare and perilous given you?

Dawn begins in the bones.

from Querencia

by Risa Kaparo