Someone once told me,

“Be kind to your mother. This is the first life she has ever lived.”

By the time I had first held my mother’s hand,

My young, curious eyes peering around a bustling street corner,

Looking at the city, but not yet seeing,

Her fingertips were already worn and calloused,

Like the dry scritta of an ancient bible,

by a life well lived.

Scars have lined themselves upon her palms,

The many ripe fruits she has carved for me,

Knife to palm as if she was all she could ever need,

A cutting board created from her independence.

She handed me a tangerine, 

Now dripping with the juice of a self-made blood orange.

“This is the first life she has ever lived.”

My empty body in the heavens,

An open shell unearthed and unmade,

Pleaded for a rib to weigh my fresh flesh to the sacred ground

A young vessel drifting down into the water oak leaves of an ancient tree,

Sleeping peacefully in a bassinet–

That was woven out of my mother’s nails and teeth.

To be human is to be bred from sacrifice,

To create is to fall deranged.