imagine your heart is just a ball you learned to dribble up
and down the length of your driveway back home. slow down
control it. plant your feet in the soft blue of your mat and release
it is hard but slowly you are unlearning the shallow pant
of your childhood. extend your body—do not reach
for someone but something fixed and fleshless and certain—
fold flatten then lift your head like a cobra sure of the sun
waiting and ready to caress the chill
from its scales. inhale—try not to remember how desperate
you’ve been for touch—yes ignore it—that hitch of your heart
you got from mornings you woke to find momma hysterical
or gone. try to give up the certainty she’d never return
recall only the return and not its coldness. imagine her arms
wide to receive you imagine you are not a thing that needs
escaping. it is hard and though at times you are sure
you will always be the abandoned girl trying to abandon herself
push up arch deep into your back exhale and remember—
when it is too late to pray the end of the flood
we pray instead to survive it.
Copyright © 2018 by Brionne Janae. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on August 22, 2018, by the Academy of American Poets.