Fledgling
Copyright © 2017 by Traci Brimhall. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on September 26, 2017, by the Academy of American Poets.
Copyright © 2017 by Traci Brimhall. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on September 26, 2017, by the Academy of American Poets.
What else can I say? The book opened
like a future or a grave. I chose a wilder way
through the woods, stalked by a mosquito
whining for my heat. I chose a stranger’s mouth
because it rhymed with love, because it
finished me off like a sentence. My throat
like a hummingbird’s, mistaken for a jewel.
I like being a mammal, the only animal who
weeps, sadness a foreplay between sodium
and water. I admire my drooping belly for
waxing and waning like a moon, stretching
over my growing son and then gathering
back together like theater curtains. My ring
finger is happy to wear a different weight
We prefer to do it with the lights on,
the Victrola scratching How long can it last?
against the tremble of curtains. Patient,
we learn the walls, their glossary of knocks,
translating harlequin and dust. What we
know lives here—lonely bone star blossom
of the spider plant, lost bee on the sill,