bloodstream

I.

it is cut off season, highrise weather
and I follow the blood as it trickles down
I am not a mother.

My mother is all blood

and no bone. doesn’t leave room for herself
to be a knife. to jab in all the wrong places
she is self-conscious of her soft

slips herself under

the doorways when the clock chimes yesterday/
tomorrow oozes her way to the nearest river, gutter,
current, rain water. sneaks past the guards

strolls her easy gait down I-35 in the dead morning
makes her way across the country, to the condensation on
my window, the sweat gripping the knobs of my spine
and I rise awake

wet my tongue, bite down, taste blood

she is here in this body-stream, this self-taped white noise
machine, a breathing papercut, an entry point

she seeps, I inhale

cradled under lamplight, a drunk twenty-something,
a body of water dancing with an IV like the way she used to
after surgery. too much displaced matter, this tetris

body,

this bag of bones, they have drained me of myself.
I stare into the drain asking my mother to bring me back to life
I apologize for taking me away, she shudders and pools at my feet

II.

the streetlights turn back on

at four a.m., I take me

and my now bloody shoes under them, talk to a ghost
who is still alive in her hollow

she stores me in her swelling,

in that terrified amorphous heart that changes shape as she shifts,
as I shift within it. I have soft but am not made of it
my body is built like a skeleton house, bare bones for those
who can bear to see her

shoulders pick up weight

procure a match, and burn herself down

she stores her love for others in places she sometimes can’t reach
in herself.

I ask myself why they make women’s pockets so small.

we store our sorries in our bloodstream. my teeth are sharp
enough to cut deep. all of my skin has become muscle
that shouldn’t have to remember where she’s been.

my mother does not remember where

she’s been.

my mother does not remember who

she’s been.

she has eclipsed herself. the wane has wiped the memory clean.
her body remembers me. I still feel the urge to hold her tighter.
I am seedling, I am overgrowth.

there is still water pooling my feet

I try to soak it back up. mixed water/ mixed blood