A water woman has no body

Emptiness is a blessing:
it can’t be owned if it doesn’t exist.
 
*
My father said to bloom but never fruit—
 
a small trickle 
eating its way through stone.
 
*
I am one kind of alive:
I see everything the water sees.
 
I told you a turn was going to come 
& turn the tower did.
 
What are the master’s tools 
but a way to dismantle him.
 
*
Who will replace the blood of my mother in me—
a cold spring rising.
 
She told me a woman made of water 
can never crack.
 
Of her defeat, she said
this is nothing.
 
Credit

Copyright © 2017 by Lisa Ciccarello. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on October 11, 2017, by the Academy of American Poets.

About this Poem
“Lately I’ve found, and I’m probably not alone in this, that everything feels like a little battle. Since poetry is where I work out my concerns and fears, I’ve started placing what I see as everyday struggles—with family, history, finances, enforced hierarchies, the weight of the opinions of others, existing in a body—into a heightened, sometimes bordering on epic, framework. This poem is a small part of that undertaking.”
—Lisa Ciccarello