As it turns out, I was the party
waiting to happen, and my mother,
she was the corridor to the clubhouse,
narrow and occult, filled with the scent of light.
I broke the kingdom inside her, broke the gala
of horses straining to get out. I broke the dancehall
mirrors and even the gilded faucet handles.
I was a river that strong. Made for flooding.
On the other side, the game had already started:
The family-in-waiting hot in a match of Scrabble.
I broke the letters, broke the game
board, broke, with my cry, the need for
speech. Only the nurse knew what to say: Here,
Love, placing me at my mother’s breast. In
The Book of Letters, Rabbi Kushner says
the OTIYOT exist independent of ink or paper
or words, says when Moses shattered the first
set of tablets, the letters ascended
to The One Who Gave Them. So, this is how
we arrive in this life: already letting go, mystical
as the ALEF-BEIT, independent of mothers, fathers
and bodies, casting our own incomprehensible,
immortal spells—flying back, already flying back
into the feathery, hollow-boned throat of God.