after Tracey Emin, Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963-1995

sunday, and the dogs outside won’t stop 

howling, an animal grief. I, too, miss my mother.  

I miss the gentle throb of rain against 

a window, the way she held 

me, her gentle hands giving me away

to sleep. our shadows sharked onto the wall like 

talismans against the dark. I did not know, then,

to be afraid, and I carried myself accordingly,

loved beyond necessity, ate until I was full. 

that was before I grew into this body, its borrowed

curves, its inherited pain. before the world opened up 

to me like a gunmetal flower, and everything afterward

was paid in blood. I am still someone’s 

child. I forget this sometimes. someone outside yells stop

the clocks. I want to agree but I can’t find

my tongue. my flesh echoing 

and echoing. at night, I practice drowning, invest

in the ritual of my body. my hair inked against 

the surface of the bedsheet like a departed

shadow. I learn transformation in

sweat, again and again. how easily breath

becomes water. how quietly a body is lost

in another.

---