o.
I once was a bottle rocket. I once
was a haystack-caught-fire. I once
was a girl-body waiting for the sign
to sprint.
 
 
 

i.
when she was 18
my K died one morning
they told
my mother / first

ii.
I have learned that to exit
the womb is not a promise.
I have learned to be a sister
& an unswept room. listen:
every girlbody will come to be
baptized, reborn.
 
 
 

iii.
a mother should know when
her girlchild / her firstborn
has come to learn the gutshot of death.
my K was a firstborn / my K
was a match-just-lit.

 
 
 
 
ii.
my sister & I have both wept.
we have both been girlbodies-born-again.
we have both come to see the endlessness
of a shared name / of a firstborn / of the second coming
 
 
 

i.
the day K died / it was morning
& I was swift to my knees
all stomach / all
eyeballs / all heat
my sister called me, stricken

o.
and this shall be a sign unto you:
how the youngest holy girlchild
strikes the eldest into being
 
 
 

how I am only made first
by deliverance of the second