Genesis
for my mother
It was the same:
it was the same again—
then I was. I missed you.
The women would return me to you, like a ceremonial knife.
Some of them wanted me. You said that if I lay on your breast,
you could get cancer. I was happy, I was loved,
for my sadness was within me and constitutive. The clouds
were whole—I wrestled with my father and won. I missed you:
I remembered how happy we were. I drank a little cup of Prozac.
I was hidden from the rest of them: I was crying.
I was almost complete.
It was the past, but how could I have known that then?
I did. I still do.